Heartbeat: The future nurse
March 28, 2019
By Paul Drew, Lead Nurse – Nursing and Midwifery Clinical Education Team
From September 2019, significant changes are afoot for nurse education to transform how we develop not just nursing colleagues but student nurses, trainee nurse associates and the wider workforce.
To reflect these changes, we’ve made a minor change to our name. Rather than being known as the nurse education team, we will be known as the nursing and midwifery clinical education team. After consulting with midwifes and midwifery students, we decided upon this change of name because it highlights our commitment to wider workforce education. It is also a reflection of the broad partnership work we’re embedding across our organisation.
The nursing and midwifery clinical education team are the first point of call for advice on placement, student and mentor issues. We have always managed midwifery placements, mentors and midwifery students and we now also manage the nurse associate apprenticeship program.
We have also launched “The Future Nurse – standards of proficiency for registered nurses”. These new standards represent the skills, knowledge and attributes all nurses must demonstrate. The first cohort embarking on the Future Nurse program will start in November 2019.
With a fresh curriculum and a new world of skills to develop, they’re the future of nursing and it falls to the team to ensure we have the right support mechanisms to help them flourish.
There’s plenty to do to ensure our plans work. Our mentorship programmes will continue but not as you know them. They will be known as practice supervisors and practice assessors.
Practice supervisors can be qualified mentors or anyone with a registrant (pin number) who has completed the in-house practice assessor’s course. Practice assessors will lead on interviews and the approval of training progression. They will work in partnership with one or two different practice supervisors to help make a decision.
For clinical training, we have two priority areas; cannulation/venepuncture and intravenous usage. Students will move to being trained and assessed in placement within their clinical areas to ensure we have nurses who are not only proficient in these skills but confident in their ability when working under direct supervision.
To support clinical areas with these major changes, we will advertise mentor transition training to update and upskill mentors to become practice assessors. Practice supervisor courses will take place for colleagues who support students. There will also be extra cannulation/venepuncture sessions available.
Throughout 2019, I hope the changes make a real impact to our nursing and midwifery colleagues, as well as to patients in terms of standard of care.
The nursing and midwifery clinical education team can support in identifying opportunities to develop and in making clinical training and education readily available and easy to access. Contact us at swbh.nurseeducation@nhs.net