Letter to the Editor
Only connect . . . a response (connected!)

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The contested place of theory

First, although the above vignette illustrates how lack of engagement with, or understanding of, sociological theory compromised nursing scholarship in those instances described; respected academics such as Philip Burnard (2010) propose that nurse researchers should avoid being “seduced into undertaking abstract and theory-driven . . . projects” (p.87). Burnard's (2010) position is perfectly understandable. Yet comments such as his might – though this is not his intention – unintentionally

Feasibility

Second, clinical nursing is a practical occupation and nurse education aims to facilitate the development of competent practitioners. Education incorporates ethical, social, psychological, biological and other ‘elements’. However, whilst practice nurses make decisions informed by ethical, social, psychological, biological and other understandings they are, like nurse scholars, rarely subject specialists if by this we mean someone who is immersed in the minutia of subject specialist knowledge on

Discipline permeability

Third, many nurses are keen to safeguard and bolster the status or position of their discipline and, as part of this endeavour, it is claimed that nursing involves or encapsulates some unique ‘essence’ or, perhaps, that nursing requires that its practitioners have some special sensibility or character trait. No judgement is here made regarding such claims. However, if Rolfe's (2010b) argument is accepted, if nurses genuinely and fully immersed themselves in the wider literature, if

Conclusion

Some few limits on reading and engagement are perhaps unavoidable. It is probably inevitable that contributors to this journal will, for example, access English language sources more frequently than non-English sources albeit that, of course, outstanding papers are written by and for non-English speaking nurses. (English only speakers might care to investigate the online Directory of Open Access Journals, 2010.) It is also possible that some objects of study or interest may only require that

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