The Scope and Variance of Clinical Nurse Specialists Job Descriptions

Specialist nurses have been part of the nursing workforce for decades but articulating the scope of such roles, educational requirements, professional expertise and levels of pay is still widely debated within the workplace. This paper examines a sample of Clinical Nurse Specialist’s job descriptions (JD’s), from across the United Kingdom. One hundred job descriptions (n=100) were attained, originating from varying health care settings and audited to explore their scope and content. In conclusion, the job descriptions showed a high level of agreement of the scope domains of a clinical nurse role but were less consistent when considering experience and educational requirements of Clinical Nurse Specialists