[This paper is a commentary on Dancing to Our Own Tune: Understandings of Advanced Nursing Practice in British Columbia by Bernadette Pauly, Rita Schreiber, Marjorie MacDonald, Heather Davidson, Jane Crickmore, Lesley Moss, Janet Pinelli, Sandra Regan and Carolyn Hammond.]

Pauly et al. conducted a revealing study on the role perceptions of nurses who self-identified as Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNS) on their Registered Nurses Association of British Columbia registration forms. Two groups emerged, nurses with basic nursing education who defined themselves as advanced because they were in non-traditional nursing roles, and nurses with graduate level education who were familiar with the concepts of Advanced Nursing Practice (APN) articulated in documents from the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) and had defined their roles according to these statements.