title: Modelling district nurse expertise.
abstract: As changes in society and health provision mean that one in four people over the age of 75 will require nursing care at home, pre-registration adult nurse education increasingly prepares student nurses for a future career within the community. District nurses undertake complex, multidimensional health and social assessments and care in a non-clinical setting and work in partnership with patients and their significant others to promote practical and psychological coping mechanisms and self-care. The district nurse's first assessment visit is key to developing a therapeutic partnership and it is often during this visit that expertise in district nursing practice emerges. The holistic, contextual and dynamic aspects of nursing in the home setting can make district nursing expertise difficult to illustrate and demonstrate within the classroom setting. This article explores the ways in which an understanding of expertise development theory can enable the tacit expertise that occurs within the first assessment visit to be made visible to student nurses, using simulation and expert narrative as a pedagogical strategy.
authors.affiliation: Tutor, Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, King's College London.
authors.forename: Michelle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Burke
mesh_terms: D003152:Community Health Nursing; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D006113:United Kingdom
keywords: District nursing; First assessment visit; Models of expertise; Pedagogy; Simulation