Towards a more place‐sensitive nursing research: an invitation to medical and health geography

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Abstract
During recent years, nursing research has adopted and integrated perspectives and theoretical frameworks from a range of social science disciplines. I argue however, that a lack of attention has been paid in past research to the subdiscipline of medical geography. Although this may, in part, be attributed to a divergence between research priorities and foci, traditional ‘scientific’ geographical approaches may still be relevant to a wide range of nursing research. Furthermore, a recasting, redirecting and broadening of medical geography in the 1990s, towards what is termed health geography, has enhanced the discipline and provided a more cultural and expansive recognition of health, and a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamic relationship between people, health and place. Given the increasing range of places where health‐care is provided and received, and some recent linkages made between nursing and place by nurse‐theorists, these newer perspectives and concepts may be particularly useful for interpreting nurses’ and patients’ relationships both within and with a variety of healthcare settings and living spaces. Indeed, although a more place‐sensitive nursing research is potentially a trans‐disciplinary academic endeavor, a range of geographical approaches would be central to such a project.