Experience and experiential leaning: Perceptions of the diabetes educator role

A great deal of learning associated with specialty nursing roles occurs informally and experientially. Here, the authors explore experience and experiential learning in the professional development of nurse diabetes educators. The role of experiential learning in the acquisition of diabetes education and management skills, and the ways in which experiential learning can be quantified for the purposes of demonstrating professional competency, are discussed in the light of data collected from two questionnaires distributed to diabetes educators and endocrinologists, and a series of focus groups.