title: Disciplinary boundary maintenance in nursing education.
abstract: This paper reports the results of two small-scale surveys examining the extent to which nursing education is reflecting patterns of insularity from other disciplines. One survey examined employment of non-nurse faculty and mechanisms for delivering non-nursing content in 16 baccalaureate and higher degree nursing programs; the other examined the disciplinary origins of required readings in 44 nursing courses. Non-nurse faculty were employed in half of the schools surveyed; however, non-nursing content was delivered primarily by nurses with advanced preparation in another discipline. There was heavy, but not total reliance on nursing authorship and journals in the courses surveyed. A pattern of relatively high insularity was inferred from reported and anticipated decreases in non-nurse faculty, the rarity of joint appointments, heavy reliance on nurses to deliver non-nursing content and use of high proportions of nursing literature.
mesh_terms: D001319:Authorship; D001877:Books; D003479:Curriculum; D003625:Data Collection; D004508:Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate; D004511:Education, Nursing, Graduate; D005181:Faculty, Nursing; D006801:Humans; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D011897:Random Allocation; D014481:United States