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The purpose of this article is to describe and analyze a reciprocal partnership developed among four university-based continuing education providers in Wisconsin. Members of this partnership collaborated in developing a statewide program to address the educational needs of nurses moving from acute or long-term care into community nursing. Components of the reciprocal partnership model were applied in developing this program. The partners identified that, despite the initial time investment, the collaborative approach was an advantage. The collaborative approach enhanced the quality of the program developed and reached a wider audience. Continuing nursing educators may want to consider partnership arrangements for program development and implementation.

This qualitative interpretivist study analyzed the interrelationships between the knowledge gained through continuing nursing education programs and the context of nurses' clinical practice. The content of nursing continuing education programs offered 9-12 months previously was reviewed. Forty semi-structured, tape-recorded interviews were conducted with nurses from hospitals, nursing homes and home care agencies to determine their use of this new knowledge. Findings indicate that nurses used information from continuing education programs to construct a knowledge base and that this process was affected by the structural, human resources, political and symbolic frames of the context in which nurses practice.

The purpose of this qualitative interpretivist study was to analyze and articulate the characteristics of nursing practice in the home health care context. Researchers sought to describe expert home health care nursing practice and how it developed. Twenty-one nurses, at various stages of practice development, were asked to write three clinical narratives describing their home health care practice. Data were analyzed to elicit themes and characteristics of nursing practice in the home health care context. Findings indicate that in the context of home health care, expert nursing practice develops along a continuum, until nurses can integrate physiological data with environmental and family data to provide seamless, intuitive, and highly complex nursing care. The results of this research can assist continuing education and staff development providers as they develop educational programs designed to facilitate professional development of new graduates and newly employed nurses in home health care.

The purpose of this article is to offer a different methodology for teaching and learning in continuing nursing education and staff development. This article describes a qualitative research study that analyzed how linkages are made between theoretical material and clinical nursing practice. Findings indicate that nursing students did not link the elements of nursing process together, that clinical preparation was not linked to theoretical material, that the meaning students made of the information was different than the instructors' and that concepts from the basic sciences were not incorporated into student meaning structures. Implications for the use of concept maps as an educational strategy in continuing nursing education are drawn.