Nurse education in Australian universities in a period of change: expectations of nurse academics for the year 2005.

In Australia, the education of nurses in the academic arena now has a decade of history which arguably represents advancement of the nursing discipline. Until the conduct of the study which is the subject of this report, however, expectations for the next decade were unknown. In order to provide information concerning the future of nursing education and related professional and social factors, and entire population of nurse academics in Australia was surveyed. Findings indicate that although advances have been made, there are a number of concerns regarding the rate of disciplinary development. These include parity of status with other academic areas, resource issues, the workload of nurse academics and the perception that there is lack of cohesiveness amongst nurses as a professional group.