New roles which enable nurses to work across organisational
and geographical boundaries will need to be forged
and these, in turn, will need to be evaluated. This is already
proving particularly challenging for educators in schools of
nursing in particular, a heavily-segmented and rapidly ageing
group in the equation, who play a key role in workforce
supply. Nurse educators operate under a variety of increasingly
severe demands and constraints, but they and their
work have been minimally studied, despite the apparent role
of an undersupply of educators as a barrier to the recruitment
and preparation of a critical mass of new nurses, notably in
the US and Canada. The educational workforce therefore
needs to be part of the research agenda for the future.