Volume 2 - No. 2 December, 1996.

EDITORIAL

When registered nurse preparation was shifted into the higher education sector in NSW some curriculum documents at the time referred to a 3000-hour program equally divided between clinical and theoretical components. Such expectations could never be sustained as they placed students of three year nursing programs in the unenviable position of having the greatest course time commitment on most campuses. Since then the amount of curriculum time devoted to clinical skill acquisition, practice and mastery has diminished in most courses. The funding restrictions for nursing programs combined with reductions in clinical learning opportunities in the field has resulted in an environment where nursing educators need to become cleverer in their design and facilitation of clinical learning. The new information technologies may provide as yet unrealised opportunities to achieve flexibility and efficiency (e.g. virtual patients in cyberspace hospitals). More importantly though is the need for nurse educators to rediscover and value the rich reservoir of knowledge that exists about clinical teaching and to ensure that evidenced based practice is a reality that underpins the practice of their teaching as well as the content. Nursing academics in NSW (and probably Australia) came into the higher education sector with a substantive knowledge of teaching and learning. It will be unwise to neglect ongoing research in this area and to allow our hunger for research about our discipline to be favored above research about teaching and learning practice in the nursing context.

Peter Cleasby

Volume 2 - No. 2

Personnel
• Patron
• Editor
• Associate Editors
• Review Panel

Contact the Editor for comments.

The address for all contributions is aejne@csu.edu.au