The social body and the biomechanical body: can they coexist in nurse education?*

Abstract
The curricula of tertiary nursing courses usually involve a number of complementary strands These include biological sciences, social sciences, behavioural sciences, other support subjects and clinical units These different strands each, to some extent, present the nursing student with a dilemma as they may present entirely different models of the body Explorations of this dilemma show that students are also being presented with different models of illness and different conceptions of appropriate health care response to illness The question is then raised as to which of these approaches most accurately reflects the realities of nursing practice