Nursing scholarship and the asymmetrical professor

SummaryA recent editorial by David Thompson and Roger Watson prompted the question ‘Nursing professors: what do they profess?’, with the stated intention of stimulating thought about the role of professors and their scholarly endeavours. This paper has been written in response to their challenge, and outlines a scholarly role for the professor of nursing which is very different from Thompson and Watson’s ‘pipe dream’ of the university without students. In particular, I argue for a fully-rounded ‘symmetrical professor’ whose role is not predominantly to conduct research, but rather to ‘profess the profession’.