I have just published a new book for nursing students and nursing graduates that attempts to provide a framework for practice that is person-centred, empowering and positive. I call it Solution Focused Nursing.

It has come about after years reflecting on what I began to see as an identity struggle that nurses go through...what exactly is our unique approach that we as nurses have, or can have with patients? How can it be more clearly defined so that it can be discussed with others,extended and improved?

In my own nursing and teaching practice, I realised that nursing work is not the same as medicine's. Yet unfortunately, it was my experience that that was how nursing was predominantly taught - the sciences, the facts, the technical procedures, the emphasis on problems and problem solving.

But for me, the nursing role is not so much about diagnosing patients' problems, (although many of us assist in this process) but in working with patients to restore health and wellbeing. Thus, nurses need skills in facilitating recovery, conveying hope, coaching, motivating, eliciting patients' strengths, and in connecting them to supports in the family and community. Nurses also need to rely less on the facts and science of the patient's disease and more on the personal and unique experience that a major life transition brings for a patient.

By clarifying this solution focused nursing role, and describing how it can work in various health transitions, my aim is to give to nurses a stronger sense of purpose, a way to do things differently from the medical and management models, and show how to be positive and optimistic with patients and each other.