RCN Students community

The Royal College of Nursing: supports your studies, represents your rights and offers advice. We are the biggest professional union for nurses and nursing in the UK for a reason.

Message from your RCN Student Adviser Gill Robertson

February 2012

Education is high on the RCN's agenda and over the coming few months you will hear, and hopefully be involved in, some of the exciting work that the College will be doing around ensuring that nurse education is all that it should be.

Student Nursing Times Awards

Nursing Times has launched a range of awards to celebrate the best in nurse education. In the portfolio of 10 categories, there are awards that honour lecturers, universities, placement providers and mentors as well as categories that celebrate the best-performing and most exceptional students in adult, children's, mental health and learning disability nursing. Entries are welcomed now and the deadline for submissions is 2 March.

2012 Michael Pittilo Student Essay Award

This competition is open to all students in the UK, studying a clinical health care subject at undergraduate level or above including; dentistry, medicine, midwifery, nursing, the allied health professions, and voluntary or statutory regulated CAM therapies.

In its third year, the Michael Pitttilo Student Essay Award title is: ‘In the context of constricted health budgets and a rapidly growing population of service users with multiple chronic conditions, what strategies can we as health practitioners use to encourage healthy ageing?'
 
The award winner will receive a £500 cash prize, the chance to present at the College of Medicine’s Annual Conference in London on 3 May and to attend the prestigious conference dinner.

The winner’s essay will also be published in October’s edition of the International Therapist Journal.
 
Deadline for submission is 6pm on 13 April 2012. For further details about how to enter visit www.collegeofmedicine.org.uk/students

The Kershaw Educational Bursary for recently qualified nurses

Newly qualified nurses, who were actively involved with the RCN as students, are urged to apply for a bursary sponsored by  Professor Dame Betty Kershaw and her family. The closing date for applications has been extended to 1 March 2012 and the funding can be used to pay for course modules, attendance at conferences or go towards degree fees. Find out more.

Student support

The outcome of the NHS Student Support (England) bursary discussion was announced on Monday 18 July. In essence, it will offer all  health care students on an eligible course of 45 weeks in duration and studying outside London a non-means-tested grant of £1,000, a means-tested bursary of up to £4,395 and a non-means-tested loan of up to £2,324.

This will only apply to students who commence their course on or after September 2012. Current students will remain on the same scheme they're on now. The RCN is assured that, at present, there is no intention by the Government to start charging fees for health care students. Read more information on the Department of Health website.

This bursary award will also be replicated in Wales from September 2012.

Frontline First

The RCN continues to work to ensure that frontline services in the NHS are protected from damaging cuts and efficiency savings through its Frontline First campaign. Read more about the campaign on the Frontline First website.

Do also get in touch with anything you wish to advertise in our events section or indeed with anything you want to tell us about what is going on in your area.

This is a busy year for education and I look forward to meeting and working with many of you.  

What's new?

Moved house? Changed your mobile? Update your details online with MyRCN

You can also now join the RCN online

Do you have a story to tell?

Are there things happening in your university which you would like to share - maybe some very good practice or maybe a problem that you have managed to solve so that everyone benefits?

If so, Gill Robertson, the RCN's student adviser, would like to hear from you. Tel: 07711 808509 or email: gill.robertson@rcn.org.uk. Get the most from your community.