Leadership for learning: a literature study of leadership for learning in clinical practice.

AIM: To report a literature study of leadership for learning in clinical practice in the United Kingdom. Background Previous research in the United Kingdom showed that the ward sister was central to creating a positive learning environment for student nurses. Since the 1990s, the ward mentor has emerged as the key to student nurses' learning in the United Kingdom. METHODS: A literature study of new leadership roles and their influence on student nurse learning (restricted to the United Kingdom) which includes an analysis of ten qualitative interviews with stakeholders in higher education in the United Kingdom undertaken as part of the literature study. RESULTS: Learning in clinical placements is led by practice teaching roles such as mentors, clinical practice facilitators and practice educators rather than new leadership roles. However, workforce changes in clinical placements has restricted the opportunities for trained nurses to role model caring activities for student nurses and university based lecturers are increasingly distant from clinical practice. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Leadership for learning in clinical practice poses three unresolved questions for nurse managers, practitioners and educators - what is nursing, what should student nurses learn and from whom? IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Leadership for student nurse learning has passed to new learning and teaching roles with Trusts and away from nursing managers. This has implications for workforce planning and role modelling within the profession.

Nursing Record/British Journal of Nursing archives, 1888-1956.

This article centres on the experience of using a new database comprising a digitised historical journal - the Nursing Record/British Journal of Nursing from 1888 to 1956, when the journal ceased publication. The project was initiated by the UK Centre for the History of Nursing, a collaboration between a number of academic bodies, including the Wellcome Trust and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN). The database was launched at Oxford in September 2003 and is freely available via the RCN website. The database was searched for material concerning emotion, as there has been increasing interest in this topic among service professionals, including nurses, during the past few decades (Hochschild, 1983; Smith, 1992; James et al, 2003). It seemed interesting to explore the same topic, as discussed in the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. Search terms used were "emotion", "feeling", "sympathy", "comfort" and "compassion". Most hits were achieved with "sympathy" and "feeling", but the majority of these were not strictly relevant to the discussion. This pilot search indicates that hand searching of paper copies still represents the "gold standard", in terms of identifying relevant material and interesting context data, not necessarily found when feeding specific search terms into a computer. The main advantages of the digitized journal are much wider access to this source and protection of fragile archival material.

Socialising nurse probationers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries--relevance of historical reflection for modern policy makers.

Primary source material related to St Mary's Hospital, Paddington and the London Homoeopathic Hospital, and St Marylebone and Kensington Infirmaries, from the late 19th to the early 20th century is examined. Descriptions of nurse probationers by matrons and sisters are analysed. Character traits rather than intellectual ability are stressed as important. More recent literature, from the 1970s till the present time, is examined to chart the shift in terms of prescription for nurse socialisation, with increasing stress on the nurse as 'knowledgeable doer'.

Florence Nightingale as 'mentor of matrons': correspondence with Rachel Williams at St Mary's Hospital.

This paper is based mainly on archival research. It is focused on letters from Florence Nightingale to one of her favourites, Rachel Williams, the reforming 19th century matron of St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, who established the nurse training school in 1877. Discussion centres on Miss Nightingale's mentoring of Miss Williams, both in terms of personal/pastoral and more objective management advice. The discussion is then related to current theories of mentoring in nurse management. It would appear that Nightingale and modern mentors follow the same main precept of 'having the best interests of the mentored person at heart'. Differences relate more to style of expression than to the basic principles of mentorship.

'Lower than a scullery maid'. Is this view of the British Poor Law nurse justified? Examination of probationer registers from Kensington Infirmary, 1890-1916.

The Sairey Gamp image has been grossly overused in describing the 'un-reformed' 19th-century British nurse/midwife. For Dickens she was a literary device--an exaggerated portrait of the reality, which has often come to represent the true state of British nursing at the time. But were things uniformly bad in nursing? Those who nursed the sick in voluntary hospitals were, undoubtedly, not of the highest class but many, no doubt, gave reasonably good service. In workhouses those entrusted with caring for the sick were often able-bodied paupers, which added an additional disadvantage to the working class status of nurses in general. In this paper I will explore the myth in relation to selected citations from the literature and to data gathered from the probationer registers of Kensington Infirmary (St Mary Abbot's Hospital) in west London.