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The year 2021 marks 100 years since the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of insulin as a medical treatment for diabetes mellitus. Its discovery changed type 1 diabetes from a terminal condition with a short life expectancy to one of long-term management, with patients now often living long and fulfilling lives. Today, much of the advice, support and prescribing of insulin is undertaken by nurses, including general nurses and those specialising in diabetes. This article provides an overview of the principles of insulin use in the management of diabetes, with the aim of enhancing nursing knowledge and improving the care of patients with diabetes.

This article discusses intuition as a legitimate form of knowledge rather than solely as an expert trait. It also describes the possibility of interdisciplinary research using theories and frameworks from psychology, computer science, physics and neuroscience to provide empirical evidence for intuitive knowledge to be considered a legitimate form of knowledge.

Nursing finds itself in evolving health and social care systems that will radically change the delivery of care and require new knowledge and ways of knowing. Integrated health and social care teams are becoming the norm. The traditional models of nurse knowledge and learning, based on medical models and the natural sciences, will not serve the needs of patients or nurses in this modernised framework of integrated care. This article examines the way in which nursing knowledge has been evaluated and offers suggestions for its continued development that are drawn from the experience of patients.

Nursing theory should provide the principles that underpin practice and help to generate further nursing knowledge. However, a lack of agreement in the professional literature on nursing theory confuses nurses and has caused many to dismiss nursing theory as irrelevant to practice. This article aims to identify why nursing theory is important in practice.By giving nurses a sense of identity, nursing theory can help patients, managers and other healthcare professionals to recognise the unique contribution that nurses make to the healthcare service (Draper 1990). Providing a definition of nursing theory also helps nurses to understand their purpose and role in the healthcare setting.

Nursing knowledge covers those aspects of knowledge that are relevant to nursing. The types of knowledge in nursing are many and varied, the generation of knowledge therefore becomes complex. Nurses need to go beyond traditional ways of understanding nursing to redefine nursing knowledge. This could determine the nature of the profession in the 21st century. Nursing must explore new ways of thinking about and explaining the profession--there will always be new directions to take and new avenues to explore.

Using wound care as an example, the author reflects on the knowledge and skills practised by nurses in nursing and research. He emphasises reflecting on practice, and introduces the importance of non-existent states of affairs, the grasp of which is essential in analysing what it is to act in patients' best interests.

The first day on a ward in my first year was daunting and scary. I had little nursing knowledge or skills. As a result I didn't have a brilliant experience on my first placement.

The project described in this article was undertaken to develop and improve the levels of nursing knowledge on diabetes mellitus and subsequently improve the quality of patient education on diabetes. A written standard on health education was devised and an educational programme for nurses was implemented to prepare nurses to meet the requirements of the standard. The project is ongoing, and initial results suggest that while there have been problems, nurses appear to be more confident in assuming their roles as patient educators.

As part of an initiative to develop evidence-based practice at the Northern General Hospital, Sheffield, a three-part project was undertaken. The aims were to identify barriers to using research in nursing, establish a baseline of nurses' knowledge and its influence on their practice in one essential area of nursing care--pressure damage prevention--and develop a strategy for change which took account of the findings from the first two parts of the project. In this article, the authors describe the second part of the project which examined nursing knowledge and practice with reference to the management of pressure damage prevention. The findings are discussed and the authors recommend that nurses integrate into their practice evidence from sources such as systematic reviews.

This article describes how Watson's theory of caring (1988) can be used to talk about nursing and to consolidate learning. The author shows how students can reflect on clinical experiences to create personal nursing knowledge which, in turn, can generate new knowledge which is grounded in practice. The article is based upon the content of a curriculum unit taught at the author's college.

Nursing knowledge and skill are vitally important to the healthcare system, and nurses must dare to say so.