Abstract
One of the most significant factors to emerge so far from the UKCC's specialist practice steering group, which I am chairing, is that working in a specialist field does not equate with being a specialist. Many nurses fail to grasp this point and, after qualifying from diploma-level preregistration courses, seek to undertake specialist nursing courses at degree level as a career step towards becoming specialist nursing practitioners. Specialist academic courses do not make practitioners specialists. In this country, the criteria for specialist nursing practice have been abused and one hopes that the UKCC will clarify this situation as soon as possible.

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