"THE WALL!"

THE TROUBLE WITH STUDENTS & THE THEORY-PRACTICE GAP!

In the article entitled "Now and Then - the trouble with students, in the June 2008 issue of Paediatric Nursing (20,5,12), the author discussed the enduring problem of 'the theory-practice gap' and reflected, helpfully, on the history of the clinical nurse teacher role, which has long since vanished. The article implies that Nursing blundered into the theory-practice gap haplessly, rather than it being a considered decision, taken consciously by the movers and shakers of the nursing profession at the time.

I recall one of my RGN tutors in the early 1980's at St James' University Hospital in Leeds lamenting the fact that the school of nursing was set back from the hospital and not an integral part of the building.

When I returned to "Jimmy's" in the late 1980's to do my paediatric course, our tutor took the opposite view. She thought that a physical gap was essential to create good practice. In fact, she advocated building a wall between the school and the hospital and having a separate entrance.

This tutor was instrumental in setting up up the paediatric branch of what was then known as 'Project 2000'. She, and presumably her generation of nurse leaders, were determined to recreate the Nursing profession along an entirely new model. Any suggestion we made were treated with with scorn despite the fact that we were already qualified nurses with several years' clinical experience. The attitude was that our clinical experience would 'contaminate' the new students with bad practices. In her view it was essential to break that cycle.

Nurse education was not perfect prior to 'Project 2000' , but student nurses were valued members of the clinical team; today's students do not have that sense of belonging and lose out in terms of clinical practice which is actually where theory and reality meet. When I completed my third year I was ready to be in charge of a surgical ward on nights as my first job as a staff nurse; today's students do not have that confidence.

The 'theory-practice gap' did not come about by the law of unintended consequences, it was the ideologically driven rejection of clinical experience that created that rift.