To fill the gap between theory and practice: a model of clinical nursing

Despite the efforts of nursing theorists, educationalists and practitioners, the theory-practice gap continues to defy resolution. This paper argues that only by reconsidering the relation between theory and practice can the gap be closed. Drawing upon ideas from teaching and other practice-based disciplines, including nursing, the article suggests that the current model of viewing theory as informing and controlling practice should give way to a mutually enhancing model in which theory is derived from practice, and in turn influences future practice. This coming together of theory and practice is referred to as nursing praxis, and suggests that informal theory should be unique to each individual encounter with each patient. The clinical nurse is thus not only a practitioner, but a theorist and researcher, who responds to patients not according to some grand, inflexible theory, but by the process of reflection-in-action, drawing upon their expertise and a repertoire of past experiences and encounters.