Review of a federal court ruling that the University of Mississippi could receive Medicare reimbursement for costs of clinical education but not for classroom nursing instruction identifies gaps in the nursing literature and a need for clearer delineation of program types and allowable costs. (SK)

Expectations of clinical-track nursing faculty involve scholarship of teaching or of practice. Faculty must embrace scholarship as part of their role and have the skills and resources to pursue it. At one school, a director of clinical scholarship provides support and resources for faculty research. (SK)

Focus groups and interviews were conducted with 15 clinical faculty, 4 nursing education administrators, 22 nurses, and 4 hospital administrators involved in clinical placements. When nurses worked with practicing faculty, they experienced less role overload, conflict, and ambiguity. Lack of communication of expectations among administrators,…

A survey of 22 nurse education programs found that 70% allocate less than 1 teaching credit hour to 1 clinical contact hour; 50% of programs had 10 or more students in classes, despite the fact that faculty were concerned about learning and supervision in courses with more than 8 students. (SK)

A project synchronizing clinical laboratory experiences with instruction in nursing theory and science that featured a close collaboration between faculty, students, and nurse practitioners was evaluated. It was found that students in the clinic experiment had higher achievement gains than the control group. (MSE)

Nurse preceptors (n=32) and undergraduate nursing students (n=40) had differing opinions about four areas of clinical learning: giving/receiving criticism, knowledge of preceptorship, clinical competence, and compatibility. Nursing education programs were advised to pay attention to communication styles, expectations, and values when pairing…

A nursing school-clinic partnership was designed to teach nursing students community health practice skills. A longitudinal evaluation is being conducted to ensure that it meets the goals of baccalaureate education and urban health nursing and that it follows a multilevel process model of organizational socialization. (Contains 37 references.) (SK)

Responses from 31 nursing faculty and the managers of nursing units in which their students' practices differed significantly in perceptions of communication. A significant positive correlation appeared between organizational climate, communication, and role strain. Role strain and communication were also correlated with length of time in the…

Case studies of nurse educators suggest that client safety is primary; student learning takes precedence over nursing practice values; values hierarchy differs from that of practicing nurses; and important practice values may be compromised to provide appropriate learning experiences. (SK)

Columbia and New York University probably served as the breeding grounds for the debates about whether nursing is a practice discipline, a clinical science, or a basic science, as well as for arguments about how practice and research should be related and, ultimately, how the DNS differs from the PhD. (MLW)