Developing continuing care: towards a teaching nursing home.

This article describes a partnership between staff, residents and relatives of a nursing home for older people with mental health problems, and lecturers within an academic department of nursing. The aim of the partnership is to develop practice and to improve the setting of the care home as an environment for living, working and learning. In our attempts to create a teaching nursing home, we recognize the need to ensure that all participants - residents, relative and staff - feel that they are valued members of the team. We describe our progress to date, together with some of the challenges of working together.