Maintaining practice: Challenges for nurse educators?

To reiterate the purpose of this editorial was not to delve into, and debate, the research evidence to substantiate or refute the purpose of ‘linking with practice’, in fact quite the opposite. Based upon our experiences we hope to encourage further debate on the purpose of nurse educators being in practice. It could be argued that as each author self-selected to work in practice for a week, there was a positive bias towards success. Indeed without exception this opportunity to ‘be a nurse and do nursing’, albeit undersupervision, had the desired outcome in that we achieved our predetermined goals and expectations. On an individual basis, it was a success. We eagerly became learners and absorbed information like a ‘good’ student should and received excellent feedback from practitioners. Moreover, our ability to recall and draw upon our years of nursing experience rapidly came to the fore thus enabling integration and participation in the work of nursing practice from a critical and in-depth perspective. We therefore conclude that being in practice, engaging in nursing and caring for people not only was/is a privilege but serves to enrich nurse educator’s knowledge base. By origin we are all nurses, this was how we began and we feel strongly that this ‘route or link in’ should be strong, valued and respected as meaningful to being a nurse educator. After all we are not, (to coin the phrase rejected by the Royal College of Nursing in 2004) ‘too posh to wash or too clever to care’, in fact the opposite is the reality.