Abstract

Post-registration education programmes are frequently informed by nationally agreed curriculum frameworks. Although these aim to promote comparability between similarly focused clinical courses, inconsistencies have recently been identified across a range of critical care curricula. This suggests that broad-based frameworks may be insufficiently sensitive to local learning needs. This study was concerned with the extent to which the curriculum met the learning needs of 10 post-registration critical care students and, in particular, aimed to explore the meaning of learning to the students themselves. The study revealed technological competence to be a necessary foundation to the development of clinical practice and this is discussed from a philosophical perspective which allows the nature of contemporary nursing practice to be reconceptualized. It is argued that curriculum development for clinically based, post-registration courses can be constructively informed by local consultation and that phenomenological study can complement more traditional approaches often relied upon in educational research.