What are the qualities and skills that go towards making a good learning disability nurse? To find out, and feed the results into a curriculum review, Helen Laverty asked the experts: a group of people with learning disabilities. Here’s what they said…

Historically the thoughts and opinions of people who have a learning disability have not influenced the development of the services provided for them. O’Brien states: ‘Historically we have been more efficient in providing people for services than services for people’ (1992). By arguing that we can care and nurse effectively for this marginalised group of society, we perpetuate the myth of ‘nurse knows best’.