Advanced practice nurses' scope of practice: a qualitative study of advanced clinical competencies.

Aim: To describe and explore Advanced Practice Nurses' clinical competencies and how these are expressed in clinical practice.

Background: Discussion concerning advanced clinical practice has been ongoing in the USA since the 1960s and in the UK since the late 1980s. Approximately 24 countries, excluding the USA, have implemented the role of Advance Practice Nurse (APN).

The role of significant others in the care of women with breast cancer.

This study seeks to gain knowledge of how significant others experience the nursing care of women with breast cancer and what their own caring needs might be. The overall research design is a clinical application research within the hermeneutic tradition. Thirty-seven significant others have contributed their own narratives about the care on the basis of open, structured questions.

Clinical application research: a hermeneutical approach to the appropriation of caring science.

Clinical caring science researchers contribute, by means of various participatory research efforts, to bring clinical practice closer to the ideals of caring. These research efforts have in the main been developed from classical action research rooted in critical theory. In this article, the authors launch an alternative research approach called clinical application research, the basis of which can be traced to the interpretative paradigm, or hermeneutics.