Changes in nurse education: Being a nurse teacher

SummaryThe aim of this study is to examine changes in nursing education through the personal accounts of nurse teachers. This paper is based on 37 in-depth interviews within a central London Healthcare Faculty, which took place between August 2003 and March 2004 and totalled 34.4 h or 305,736 words. There were thirty female and seven male participants, who between them shared 1015 years of nursing experience, averaging at 27.4 years (min7–max 42). These nursing years included 552 years of teaching practice, the average time being 15 years spent in a formal teaching role (min 0.5–max 29). Each interview was subjected to a process of thematic content analysis as described by Miles and Huberman.This paper identifies how nurse teachers try to combine teaching with a nursing role. The Government, the NHS, the Universities and the Nursing and Midwifery Council all articulate contradictory visions of the nurse teacher role, which raises the question of what additional value (if any) is gained from combining nursing practice and its teaching. This tension has led to a default situation where the longer a nurse works as a teacher the less likely it is that they will maintain any nursing practice.