The Willis Report on Nursing Education [ ii ]

The Willis Report -

https://www.macmillan.org.uk/documents/newsletter/willis-commission-report-macmail-dec2012.pdf

includes a series of technical papers one of which Pre-registration nurse education: Overview of themes from literature 2010-2012 outlines Skill Sets. I could relate Hodges' model to the identified skill sets in this paper using the 2x2 HTML table, but perhaps there's another way by considering the skills sets:

• ICT skills/health informatics 
• Literacy and numeracy skills
• Life support and airway management 
• Infection prevention 
• Genomics
• Bioscience 
• and Learning disabilities

Using these I can also explain how they both help and hinder the case for Hodges' model and illustrate the complexities of nurse education.

The subjects of genomics and bioscience can be placed quite reliably in the sciences domain. Life support and airway management are pretty explicit in their physicality. In an emergency you need to act. The individual's physiological (mechanics) functioning is compromised. This must be assessed urgently and compensated for. The model was also created with people living with learning disability very much in mind; consider the reference to the individual, the family, the increasing relevance of the POLITICAL domain to this client group and their families? ICT skills are primarily directed at intrapersonal knowledge and skills, physical and virtual spaces, drawing on the sciences. These domains are the preserve of the individual, in terms of learning, experience and sense making.

The biggest challenge for Hodges' model is context. Context is rarely rectilinear, try as we might it springs out of the intended boxes and categories we try to stuff it into. We very quickly have to acknowledge the social and political dimensions of ICT skills and health informatics. For example, the importance of information governance, confidentiality, legislation, policy and training provision. Returning to the learning disabled individual, they must contend (often as a community) with ongoing social stigma and the socio-political matter of having access and opportunity to education, buildings, facilities and technologies. Access then is not just a matter of cognition and physical mobility, movement and proximity.

If Hodges' model encourages us to place concepts in boxes

(the care domains)

 it also forces the realisation of the need 

to think outside the box. 

To relate, to associate with the domains adjacent - 'next door'. Ultimately can we integrate the care concepts providing a conceptual scaffold for person-centred, holistic care? There is in effect a cognitive rule, a heuristic - that is not necessarily very expensive cognitively or temporally, but can (I believe) pay huge dividends in assuring the quality of care. It runs as follows:

For any given care concept in learning

 consider how it applies and relates 

to each of the care domains.

See also:

The Willis Commission on Nursing Education [i]
The Willis Commission on Nursing Education [iii]