References
South East London Training Hub’s student nurse placement process
Abstract
The shortage of general practice nurses is predicted to get worse in the coming years. One way of attracting new nurses to general practice is through education programmes. However, most nursing degrees do not provide enough primary care experience to students and there are barriers to general practice offering placements. South East London Training Hub has aimed to increase the number of placements on offer. The training hub aims to alleviate as much of the extra workload and pressure brought on by hosting a student as possible. This article covers some of the things being trialled, including improving training, simplifying documentation and keeping records.
Nurses and managers experience barriers to hosting student nurse placements. South East London Training Hub are trialling a new placement process to overcome these barriers
The shortage of healthcare staff in the NHS is widely acknowledged. General practice nurses (GPNs) are a vital part of the primary healthcare system. A review published in June 2022 by the Health Foundation’s REAL Centre (Shembavnekar et al, 2022) warns that without urgent policy action, the NHS in England could face a shortage of between 6400 and 10100 full-time equivalent (FTE) GPNs by 2030/31. It is, therefore, essential that we work together to retain existing nurses, and attract new ones into general practice.
One way of attracting new nurses to general practice is through education programmes. Most nursing degrees do not provide enough primary care experience to students. In a 2015 Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) survey, only 22% of respondents had observed a GPN during a pre-registration placement (QNI, 2015). The QNI (2015) survey also observed that only 27% of general practices offer placements to undergraduate student nurses, compared to 61.5% offering placements to undergraduate medical students. If we are to recruit new nurses to general practices, it is imperative that their pre-registration education programmes provide exposure to the role.
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