Nursing faculty practice: challenges for the future

Limited clinical site availability, outstanding mental health needs and barriers to faculty practice: A proposal for resolution

A Canadian university is experiencing increasing difficulty in accessing appropriate clinical experiences for undergraduate psychiatric nursing students. Meanwhile, many nursing faculty are experiencing an increased desire for clinical practice opportunities. Concurrently a gap in mental health service delivery exists for those residents who experience severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI). This paper proposes a solution through establishment of a mental health promotion clinic as a mechanism for managing issues concerning clinical site availability, faculty clinical practice, and mental health service provision for persons experiencing SPMI.

Integration of nursing education, practice, and research through community partnerships: a case study

Models demonstrating an evidence-based approach to the integration of nursing education, research, and practice are needed to ensure excellence in the nursing profession. Using a theoretical framework of community-engaged scholarship, this article describes a program developed by the Medical University of South Carolina's College of Nursing linking advanced practice, service learning, and applied clinical research for nurse-midwifery faculty and students, while meeting the perinatal healthcare needs of a group of underserved women. Principles of community-based partnerships and integration of scholarship and research in a clinical discipline provide a pragmatic structure to describe and facilitate replication of the program.

A comparison of North American and European conceptualizations of clinical supervision

Examination of the extant North American and European substantive literature indicates two differing conceptualizations of the purpose and resultant practice of clinical supervision (CS). The North American conceptualization creates the need for all supervisors to be more "expert" in the particular speciality of nursing than the supervisee, and this paper explores some of the hitherto unanswered issues arising from this. The European conceptualization posits supervision as a forum for considering the personal, interpersonal, and clinical aspects of care so as to develop and maintain nurses who are skilled and reflective practitioners. This situation creates the need for supervisors to be effective at supporting nurses in self-monitoring, identifying difficulties in practice, and finding the proper place to make good the deficit, not necessarily to be more expert in the particular nursing speciality.

Faculty practice: a model to bridge the theory-practice divide

It has been suggested that as a result of nurse education withdrawing from the clinical setting and becoming established in institutions of higher education, there has been a separation of theory from practice. Recognition of the theory-practice gap by clinicians and professional bodies has led to calls for nurse educators to retain a clinical focus. Faculty practice is described and critically discussed as a model of practice to bridge the theory-practice divide. In this article, the author presents the results of a 6-month pilot study to implement such a model within a community trust, and suggests that the development of such initiatives will foster collaborative working and improve nurse education and patient care.

Lecturer practitioners: a literature review

Much of the existing literature on lecturer practitioners to date is comprised of the perspectives of individuals within the role and how they function in their specific setting. It is surprisingly difficult from this work, however, to define the role of lecturer practitioner. The authors were commissioned by a regional health authority to undertake a study of lecturer practitioners within that region. In the process of undertaking this study, a literature review was carried out. Whilst the authors found an abundance of literature surrounding the theory and practice gap, and the development of the lecturer practitioner role as one possible solution, they were not able to find a comprehensive review of the multifaceted aspects of the lecturer practitioner role. This paper is an attempt to provide such a review, and will address the following aspects: the need for lecturer practitioners; their origin within nursing and midwifery education; the development of the lecturer practitioner role; the debate surrounding academic and clinical credibility; and finally, the current situation for lecturer practitioners.