Background: As novice practice developers who have attended several enhancing practice conferences and a practice development school, we have been experimenting with the core concepts of person-centred nursing practice and practice development within our masters of nursing programme at Ryerson University, Toronto. Through the process of revising course syllabi, seminar outlines and activities to align with these concepts, we have collated our reflections on the connections between person-centred nursing practice, practice development and advanced nursing practice competencies. A brief description of the Canadian context is provided, along with key elements of course activities, to help situate our conceptualisations.

Aim: To share our emerging ideas about connectedness and its usefulness as a metaphor that captures the critical interconnection between person-centred care, practice development and postgraduate nursing education.

Conclusions: Connectedness is a relevant and important metaphor to articulate our theoretical understanding of how person-centred care, practice development and the development of advanced nursing competencies are intimately connected. We propose that explicit connections are necessary and essential if postgraduate nursing students are to embrace and sustain person-centred practices as advanced nursing practitioners who are required to transform cultures of practice within varied and complex healthcare settings.

Implications for practice:

• Critical companionship is an important role for faculty within postgraduate nursing education
• Connectedness is an important metaphor for describing the integral nature of person-centred care and practice development within academic settings

This article by Karen LeGrow and Sherry Espin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 License.