Collaboration between service and education: perils or pleasures for the clinical nurse specialist?

A critical challenge to nursing today is the development of effective models of service and education collaboration. Collaborative roles that include formal responsibilities for both education and service offer many opportunities and challenges for the clinical nurse specialist; they also require a juggling act. This paper describes the author's collaborative role in a university medical center with an emphasis on the perils and pleasures of the role. Also included is a brief history of the development of collaborative roles, the strengths and benefits of collaborative roles, and a presentation of selected collaborative models using a framework from the literature.