ABSTRACT
IMAGINE THAT . . . You are a nurse working in the community as part of a district nursing team based in a
GP surgery and wanting to do research into inappropriate referrals from hospital staff
to yourself and your district nursing team. As such, you begin by considering why the
referrals are generated in this way and with this in mind you start to think about role
perception in terms of how hospital staff and other agencies might view the role of the
district nursing service (McGarry, 2003) and your own team’s portrayal of their roles
and responsibilities to others in the GP surgery and to other agencies.
