The work style of students of mental health nursing undertaking the Project 2000 schemes of training: a logical analysis

The work methods of students of mental health nursing are analysed to see which are best suited to facilitate the central educational aims of the Project 2000 schemes of training. Supervised primary nursing is found to be best because it engenders a professional cognitive style and a heightened sensitivity to the empirical, research-based culture. It is argued that team nursing causes, in its practitioners, a bureaucratic cognitive style, which acts as a structural constraint upon the learning and mastery of the process skills advocated by the Project 2000 authors.