The lecturer practitioner role and the development of intensive care nursing practice

Abstract

Who is the most appropriate person to teach the practice of nursing? This has been the question of much debate in nursing history over the last 40 years, and until recently attempts to answer the question have been largely ambivalent (Kenworthy & Nicklin 1989). Clinical teaching has always been devalued. For example, qualifications for the clinical teacher were lower than those required for nurse teacher/tutor, and a recommendation made by the Working Party of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Association of Nurse Education that those teachers without degrees could perhaps find placements within clinical areas (Clifford 1989). It has been suggested that in relation to nursing theory development, significant holistic nursing problems in nursing have been ignored (Meleis 1985). For example, Pearson (1992) suggested that nursing literature has been preoccupied with grand theory with only scant attention paid to other kinds of theory such as local theory (namely what relates to a particular context), and that respectability has been gained only for theorising for the generation of theoretical knowledge. That which is associated with practice has almost been regarded as 'non-theory'. Various hybrid roles have developed aiming