Title : Rebalancing health and social care experience in the pre-registration nursing curriculum
Abstract:
Practice placements are essential to all pre-registration Nurses, Midwives and Allied Health Professionals, providing the theoretical underpinning and developing the learner’s professional identity (Knight et al., 2023). Since changes to supervision and proficiencies by the Nursing Midwifery Council in 2018, student nurse placements can often focus on healthcare settings rather than social care experiences. It is vital that Higher Education Institutes ensure students gain this wide valuable experience and additionally support the workforce pipeline into social care. Within UK HEIs, pre-registration nursing education placement providers require health and/or social care registrants to supervise and assess students on practice placements (Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), 2018). Private, independent and voluntary organisations (PIVOs) are a valuable source of these types of practice placements, but many had formerly lain dormant because they otherwise struggle to meet regulatory requirements for student practice assessment.
In response, the University of Chester has developed an innovative indirect practice supervision/assessment model, which supports the development of these types of practice placements and is delivered via self-sustaining funding, ensuring optimum support for students and the practice area. Our model allows full coverage of PIVOs without the recruitment of additional academics. This unique focus leads the way as a novel research strategy by implementing a financially and morally sustainable model of supervision/assessment.
Implementation has re-established students’ opportunities to undertake innovative placements extending beyond the NHS, which promote vital alternative skillsets across diverse cultural and situational backgrounds. Across the UK, it is recognised that this model represents an innovative method of widening student experience, expanding placement circuits and supporting future workforce pipelines whilst being an effective outreach method for recruiting highly motivated academic health and social care staff, which grows a sustainable academic nursing workforce (BJN, 2022).
Audience Take Away Notes:
- The paper will provide delegates with a workable and transferrable roadmap for implementing sustainable and cutting-edge methods of student placement provision in Nursing education
- The paper gives an example of best practice and success which helps facilitate both student retention and recruitment.
- Those present will be able to use this knowledge to expand and productively update the teaching practices in place at their institutions.
