Nursing, epidemiology and the National Health Service

Abstract

It is not immediately apparent why a consideration of the organisation of nursing within the development of the health service should form part of a text on epidemiology. However, the milieu in which nurses work and act shapes the strategies that they adopt both in their clinical practice and in the research that they pursue. Nurses and nursing do not operate in a social vacuum. Individual professional practice and development is realised through an ongoing dynamic interaction, not only with other nurses, but also with many other professional and non-professional workers in the healthcare system.