In the past, any analysis of policy and nursing has been confined to a policy analysis of nursing, that is centred on a critique of nursing’s invisibility and on the way in which mainstream policy impacts on nursing practice and organisation. For example, the 1991 NHS reforms had an enormous impact on
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nursing under the GP fundholding scheme as the number of practice nurses quadrupled,1 and the health visitor workforce was cut to the bone. In hospitals, nurse practitioners took over medical roles, whilst the independent sector flourished as we saw the wholesale jettisoning of long-term care from NHS long-stay wards into private nursing homes.