The skills-teaching myth in nurse education. From Florence Nightingale to project 2000

Using contemporary accounts as well as current academic literature this paper considers the amount and quality of skills teaching to nursing students from the mid 19th century to the late 20th century. All sources agree that the responsibility to teach practice skills lay with ward sisters who are reported to have regularly neglected to focus on this aspect of their role. Schools of nursing, on the other hand, were charged with the teaching of theory. Failing to find any evidence of good quality and systematic skills teaching to nursing students in the past this paper argues that no 'golden age' of skills teaching in nurse training or education ever existed.