Preventing the 'professional cleansing' of nurse educators

The purpose of this paper is to argue that contrary to perceived wisdom nursing education ought to abandon the lecturer practitioner role on the grounds that it is a flawed concept predicated on a false assumption. In addition, and more seriously, it is in effect a significant hidden subsidy to service at the expense of education. It is suggested that by restructuring the nurse educator's role using the concepts of primary nursing as a method of organizing nurse educator's core activities, the perception and reality of teaching practice could be transformed. Calpin-Davies suggests that such a strategy enables nurse educators to be considered as practising nurses. It also has the added advantage that it is consistent with the form of organizing nursing expected of clinical colleagues. In addition it provides a basis for partnership with clinical nurses and with students, it responds to the imagined theory--practice gap, and affords nurse educators the means of becoming a credible role model.