Who is best qualified to teach bioscience to nurses?

Since the professions moved into higher education, diversity has developed in the amount, depth and method of bioscience teaching in nursing and midwifery courses. Bioscience encompasses biology, life science, anatomy and physiology. This diversity is a cause for concern at a time when nurses and midwives are taking on more of the traditional medical tasks such as prescribing and running clinics. Students need to acquire a sound grasp of anatomy and physiology and to achieve this a substantial amount of curriculum time needs to be devoted to bioscience. The main argument concerns not what should be taught but who should teach bioscience to students; whether this should be specialist lecturers from higher education science departments or nursing and midwifery teachers from health studies. This article makes the case for collaboration involving subject specialists and nursing/midwifery teachers and this is illustrated by examples of how such collaboration works in one higher education institution to produce a practical laboratory-based course. The conclusion is that time spent in life science laboratories should not be considered a waste of nursing/midwifery teaching time because the life science laboratory is a microcosm of clinical practice. This relevance can be emphasised through collaboration between nursing and bioscience lecturers.