Current Nurse Education

[backman]

 This weeks Nursing Times calls for us to get "Nurse Training Back on Track". Does this then mean it is off track now, and if so why? Without this thread turning into a "It was all great in my day" history lesson what do members feel are the strengths and weaknesses of the current system.For those students of nursing today just what would you change? The ratio of practice /theory course content?
Salaried training rather than bursary? Nurrsing is likely to become even more challenging into the 21st Century so what should we do to produce competent practitioners able to meet those challenges?

Thoughts please anyone,don't be shy,lets try to attract some new posters to our site.

[SuzanneL]

I like the idea of salaried training rather than bursaried education. I want to see schools of nursing within a hospital setting linked to universities- not in universities lnked to hospitals.
I would like to get rid of the idea of supernumary status where they  concentrate on how to get off the ward to do 'visits'.
I did 3month blocks medicine( paedicatrics??? not sure how that worked out) surgery  and elderly care (am I allowed to say geriatrics)elderly care in my first year to build up skills. My second year was shorter period in medicine and surgery with blocks of nights folloed by A+E, community, theatres and recovery  and lastly the speciality linked to my theatre experience. Had I been doing my SRN then I would have gone on to do blocks of Maternity, Psychiatry and a management placement then sit finals.

Currently our students will attend day schools for paediatric experience perhaps never seeing a sick child. Have an element of choice and one student on our ward  had her first placement on ortho the came back for her 'surgical' placement and is now back for her management placement. Has not seen a general surgery ward. Her medicine was all specialist with elderly care being built within it as elderly care wards are few and far between. Not exactly a blanced training .

I do understand the 'need' for a degree/diploma standard education, but it is my opinion it often but by no means always produces a nurse who has huge holes in their  knowledge  base. Is totally unprepared for those first months on a ward- as an enrolled nurse I was taking charge on lates and weekends before I had my GNC badge on my uniform. I certainly would not feel comfortable leaving a 6 month post reg Staff Nurse in that position now. These degrees and diplomas should be earned post registration. Which is what i did and the whole diploma meant more to me with the experience to back them up. I have completed 30 credits at level 3 and have decided I cant be bothered as all it does is place an academic burden which at the end of it gives me no gain that I feel is worth the effort. I am 49 this year and what can it give me when I hope I am in the job I will complete my career in and plenty of floppy discs (internet) to fill the gaps my hard drive (brain) has no room for should I need to solve a problem.

I do hope this is just my current hospitals situation but I certainly fear for any hospital admissions in my  older years when all the pre project 2000 nurses have retired and I have to rely on HCA's many of which are better and more 'qualified' to call themselves a nurse than the Registered nurses they have to 'work for/under' .

[wilfb]

Hi.

What a great bucketful of common sense Suzanne! I feel a bit of a fraud joining in as I have been retired for some years now, but I just had to say how much I agree with the majority of sentiments expressed by SuzanneL. Basic (well rounded) experience and practice first, university level education to follow... The 'well rounded' experience is, I feel, what seems to have gone missing..

But I am willing to be corrected. Thanks Suzanne - I thought that maybe I was getting old!

WB.

[backman]

In my current professional role as a Back Care Adviser ,I  have been known to draw comparrisons between the practical moving and handling of patients and driving a car.Both require a theoretical basis and understanding of how this should occur,and the broader this knowledge then supposedly the better either may be achieved.Both however are dependant upon practical application of those theories in real life situations and we all know that whilst some people may have the theory they may not be quite so hot on the practice.Nursing is a practical skill which some may have difficulty in doing well but the more practice they have under an experienced and quaified tutor,the easier this may be?