Personal and personal practical knowledge of teaching and nursing connecting narratives on the professional knowledge landscape of nursing and education: Shades of Lucy

Clinical teaching provides nursing students with the opportunity to learn nursing in a caring practice environment with patients and others. Over the years tensions between caring for patient needs and caring for student learning needs in my practice were troubling. This is a study of these tensions presented in a series of inquiries in four sections. The first section, consisting of three chapters, traces the origins of my inquiry in my master's research paper. This paper consisted of a personal narrative based on stories, journals, class assignments and experiences in a graduate class. In addition I drew on a pilot study with a colleague and her students described in section two. The idea of personal knowledge of caring in relationship in family and social situations emerged in this initial narrative research.;Section two consists of three chapters. The pilot study of my participant and eight nursing students used participant observations, journals and audio-tapes of teaching sessions over five weeks in a clinical course in a diploma program. This section concludes with two chapters, one a retrospective based in a narrative inquiry of a collaborative self-study with three groups of students in a clinical course on maternal and infant health and the records on my teaching. The second my reflections on a theory/practice dilemma in an emergency situation uses story, journals, and conversation, to explore my personal practical knowledge of nursing in emergencies.;Section three consists of two chapters, a narrative inquiry of clinical teaching with a colleague; and reflections with a former student working in community health nursing on the health care reform landscape of the 1990s. Theory/practice tensions in clinical situations with students and patients creating moral and professional dilemmas in nursing is shown in the narrative analysis of stories on this landscape.;The final section consisting of one chapter draws the results of this series of narrative studies together. I argue that a shift towards a narrative approach to curriculum which explores the personal and professional narratives of caring in nursing may shape and re-shape how students learn in relationship in practice situations on their professional knowledge landscape.