ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the professional development of practice nurses. The nurse practitioner (a woman) worked with one female and two male doctors, and patients had free access to nurse practitioner care. The Birmingham nurse practitioner study was based on the American model, and perhaps for that reason showed similar trends in outcome measures and content of work. The question on what nurses should be doing calls for answers to two important considerations for nurses: What is the unique contribution which nurses can make to primary health care? What are nurses good at? The problem for British practice nursing is that we have little evidence to answer these questions. It seems that nurses are good at counselling people toward healthier lifestyles and have potential access to many people coming into the primary health care system.
