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The essential procedural skills that newly graduated doctors require are rarely defined, do not take into account pre-vocational employer expectations, and differ between Universities. This paper describes how one Faculty used local evaluation data to drive curriculum change and implement a clinically integrated, multi-professional skills program. A curriculum restructure included a review of all undergraduate procedural skills training by academic staff and clinical departments, resulting in a curriculum skills map. Undergraduate training was then linked with postgraduate expectations using the Delphi process to identify the skills requiring structured standardised training. The skills program was designed and implemented without a dedicated simulation center. This paper shows the benefits of an alternate model in which clinical integration of training and multi-professional collaboration encouraged broad ownership of a program and, in turn, impacted the clinical experience obtained. Keywords: multi-professional, skills training, undergraduate medicine

A national study was conducted in England over a three-year period (1991-1994) to explore the changing role of the nurse teacher. The study used multiple methods of data collection, including a modified Delphi survey and a series of telephone interviews. A wide variety of respondents (nurse teachers, midwife teachers, clinical nurses, health service managers and higher education lecturers) were included in the sample. This paper presents findings relating to the changes in the role of the nurse teacher following the formation of links with higher education. Some of the issues discussed include the difficulties related to academic status and the relationships between nurse teachers and other lecturers in higher education, changes in teaching styles and the place of student nurses within higher education. The implications for nurse teachers which stem from a closer association with higher education are explored.