The negotiated order of clinical teaching

The clinical teacher and students in traditional nursing education programs represent a temporary system within the permanent culture of the clinical area in which they teach. Temporary systems are a set of diversely skilled people working together on a complex task over a limited period of time. A member of a temporary system struggles to maintain a differentiated identity within the permanent system, while at the same time seeking a sense of collegiality and belonging. Clinical teachers experience a feeling of being somewhat akin to the nursing staff in the clinical area in which they teach because they are nurses. At the same time, clinical teachers are alienated from the nurses because the staff has developed a permanent structure that excludes clinical teachers from many aspects of nurses' working lives. The focus of research concerning clinical teaching has been the tasks assigned to the clinical teacher rather than the experience of teachers as members of a temporary system. This article presents one aspect of a year-long exploratory and descriptive qualitative research study designed to explore and describe what takes place in the realm of clinical teaching in nursing education. The discussion will focus on the experience of clinical teachers as temporary systems according to the sociological framework of negotiated order.