The business of nurse educators in troubled times.

摘要

I wanted to be a nurse teacher so badly. As a wistfully young clinician I loved working with students. I loved learning every aspect of my craft, art or practice-call it what you will. 1 loved the various aspects of scholarship that were unfolding for me as I discovered this wondrous iceberg called Nursing, where there forever seemed to be so much more below the surface than I could fathom. 1 loved the thinking, the discussions with colleagues and students, the questioning, the writing, the presenting and the "further studies."It seemed the most natural of progressions to become a nurse educator. Such a fond hope however ignored the oxymoronic realities of nurses' "career progression" in the 1970s, especially for those of us considered less than "real nurses," from fields such as Learning Disability (or "Mental Handicap"/"Mental Subnormality" as it was then grotesquely defined). 1 regularly petitioned the local "College of Nursing" to undertake some, any, teaching course, to work in some capacity as an unqualified clinical teacher, to "help out" in some way. Had I worn a sandwich board saying: "Will Work For Food" 1 could not have seemed more willing.