On donkeys, ingratiates, thinkers and...clinical development units.

Clinical Development Units celebrate nurses as thinkers and nursing as a highly skilled professional activity. They are typified by the exploration and development of therapeutic, consumer-focused and research-based practice and participatory governance. Establishing and maintaining them, therefore, can be problematic in health care facilities typified by centralism, autocracy and nurses' disempowerment. In this type of facility nurses are treated like donkeys and/or ingratiates. What CDUs are, the standards nurses in them strategically and systematically pursue and their achievements to date will be discussed. In addition,some sociopolitical impediments to their development will be identified together with recommendations for their successful establishment and maintenance.