workforce
Bridging the gap
Lecturer-practitioner aims
to unite the theory of
nursing with its practice.
Sam Miller interviewed by Dallas Bastian
N
ursing academics are often viewed
as being out of touch with clinical
practice and preoccupied with
research, while clinical nurses are viewed
as too busy to educate or research.”
To tackle this concern, noted by the
authors of an article on closing the theory-
practice gap in nursing education, La Trobe
University researchers established the role
of the lecturer-practitioner.
Sam Miller, an Intensive Care Unit
lecturer-practitioner and postgraduate
course coordinator, unpacked the
appointment in the Australian Nursing and
Midwifery Journal.
“The vision for this role is a clinician
endorsed as an expert nurse within a
speciality area and recognised by the
academic environment as a professor.
However, in reality, appointments are
commonly made to nurses who are
experts in their fields and working towards
achieving nurse practitioner and professor
titles,” Miller and her co-authors wrote.
“This dual accreditation across
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both academia and advanced clinical
practice places the individual in a unique
position to move seamlessly between
practice, education and associated
research activities.”
Nursing Review sat down with Miller
to find out more about the lecturer-
practitioner role and the impact of the
model on the theory-practice gap.
NR: What does the lecturer-practitioner
role entail? Who would be an ideal
candidate?
SM: An ideal candidate for the lecturer-
practitioner position is someone who
wants to work in nursing education, but
also someone who wants to maintain a
strong clinical practice portfolio. So, usually
someone who’s quite advanced in the
nursing practice – either a nurse consulting
position or nurse practitioner, that sort of
level of practice within a specialty.
We’re also looking to design a
curriculum and deliver that teaching.
And because of the integration between
theory and practice, it’s someone who’s
able to move between the two areas.
So, someone who’s keen to deliver the
education but also have strong links
with practice and maintain their own
clinical caseload.
What does research tell us about
the impact this role can have on
postgraduate education?
There’s not a huge amount of research
on the topic, which is something the
team here at the Alfred Clinical School
are working on. We’re going to look at
how that works for the students and the
educators, and what we call industry
partners – the nurse managers and clinical
educators that work in these sites that we
integrate with.
The research comes from undergrad
– it’s moved from nursing education
coming out of the bedside, as it was 40,
50 years ago, to universities. That created
the theory-practice gap, so that’s what
you were taught in university, in a separate
building. And then you would go on
placement and you would be expected to
move that knowledge across, even though
the two settings were very different.
So, as that has evolved, we then tried to
bridge that theory-practice gap. And the
lecturer-practitioner positions allow us
to be visible in the clinical area as well as
in teaching. So even if there’s a teaching
session I’m not delivering, I’m always visible
to the students.
And they know that I’ve quality-assured
the teaching that’s been delivered by other
practitioners, and they also see me in a
senior position in Intensive Care, so that
helps assure them I am a clinical expert and
also dedicated to their education.
Why else do you think the addition of this
role makes a difference to how students
view their education?
I think it helps with transparency, and
speaking to some students that study at
universities that don’t have these positions,
I think they still feel that the university and
its clinical area are very separate. There’s
no communication between the two.
Undertaking postgraduate studies is very
separate to the clinical practice. It’s very
difficult for them to align the two. So even
if they just see me walking around the unit
in a senior position, they’re able to relate
the understanding that they have from the
theory into clinical practice. And they can
see that these are not two distinct bodies
of their professional development.
Any academic learning that they do
does immediately transfer over to their
clinical practice. And that’s the purpose of
us delivering the postgraduate education.
It’s not a purely academic qualification that
they get. It’s something that’s recognised
clinically to ensure that they are in fact
practitioners.
What challenges does this role bring
about for the professional? You know,
having a foot in both camps?
The job is you have dual lines of reporting,
both academically to the head of schools,
to your professor, and to the nurse