The value of nursing models, especially the well-published works of many of the American theorists, has been debated and argued at length. Indeed the topic was the subject of the July debate at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, which is an indication itself of the interest post-registration nurses working in cancer care have in the subject. Nurses have talked about using models of care for many years. There are even those who, for example, equate Florence Nightingale's work and writings with a nursing model. I would prefer to interpret Nightingale's work as a nursing philosophy and it is nursing philosophies rather than nursing models that are explored further in the context of cancer in this paper.