Journey of change: building a bridge between neonatal nursing education and practice

Faculty of a post-basic registered nurse preparation neonatal intensive care nursing education program in Canada questioned how well students' knowledge equipped them to handle the demands of the clinical setting. The response to their inquiry prompted the abandonment of traditional teaching approaches and laid the foundation for a modification of the curriculum. The faculty developed a novel way of looking at the program's content, so that it centered on the needs of the neonate. The article introduces a unique neonatal nursing framework and explains how this framework fits with neonatal nursing education and neonatal nursing. This framework has potential usefulness for inservice, orientation, and outreach programs.