Biological sciences in nursing has seen a change in status over the last 20 years. As a nurse educator, I became aware that with the introduction of the ‘nursing model’ all signs of biology were banished from the curriculum. Anatomy and physiology were thought to be akin to the ‘medical model’, and as such they fell outside the nurse’s territory. At all costs, nurses had to be seen as autonomous practitioners in their own right. But autonomy at what price? Several generations of nurses were trained with minimal understanding of how the body works, or how it reacts to trauma, drugs and disease. They had little conception of.
