Get involved

By members, for members

  • Student information officers

As a student member of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) there are real advantages in getting more involved in the RCN’s work - you will get more information, more access to specialist groups and members and, inevitably, more ready for that all-important first interview. 

One of our recently qualified nurses said that he was told after his first interview that he was appointed to the job because he appeared to understand the wider political and social issues affecting nursing at the moment. He believes that was due to his involvement with the RCN. 

Now there is a new way to get more involved without having to take vast amounts of time off your studies. 

Why not consider becoming one of the new RCN student information officers and join our network of students who share information from the RCN with their colleagues?  Let your class know about student conferences, tell them where to access that all-important reference for your assignment from the RCN website - become the one who knows. Become the conduit through which the RCN will make sure that its student members are aware of all that their annual £10 gets for them. 

In return, we will ensure you have immediate access to all information affecting students. We will give you a pre-loaded memory stick with a vast range of information on it and will keep you up-to-date with all new developments and publications etc that you would find useful. You will be the  first to know about upcoming events and training days, consultations that affect nursing students and we will facilitate you having your say. Of course, as a student, you will have a reduced subscription rate to the Nursing Standard magazine and there will be a specific area and discussion area on the RCN website for our student information officers. 

Local events and issues will also be flagged up to you and there may be the opportunity for you to represent the RCN on various meetings and committees if you would choose to do that.

We would like to see one of these student information officers in every university, in every cohort and every class to make sure that all students get the most from their RCN membership. Come and join us.

All you need to do is download the application form from the "Get Involved " section. Ask two student colleagues who are also RCN members to nominate you and sign the form and then return it to us. Your local office will contact you to talk through your role, help you navigate your memory stick and become your RCN contact for the duration of your education. These are useful people to know. 

What could be easier?

Student community

The student community will be tailored to meet your informational and communication needs. To do this we are establishing an ongoing training scheme for volunteer community editors, recruited from the community, to update the live website.

If you have information you would like to see on your community pages then send it to the community editorial team. Your editorial team will be able to decide where to put the information on the website. In this way, we hope to build up an excellent informational resource for community members.

Types of information you may wish to send are:

  • News
  • Events, conferences and meetings
  • Opinion
  • Feature articles
  • Consultation documents
  • Useful links
  • Resource material (books, manuals, websites, etc)
  • Anything else you feel may benefit members within your professional community.

Send all your information to the editor.

We would like to expand the number of community editors so that the burden of updating the website is spread across more than one person. If you would like to become an editor for this community then please email the editor.

As an editor you will need to attend our training session. For further information please see your community help section.

Student discussion zone

Your student discussion zone is the place for you to interact with other community members. If you wish to start a debate on any professional matter that interests or concerns you then you are free to do so here.

Only community members can post messages on your discussion zone. Instead of emailing the editor with your opinion it may be more beneficial to other members to start a conversation on the subject.

You are free to say what you want, but please adhere to our Acceptable Use Policy.

Your comments

Beneath many of the news, opinion and feature articles within your community you will be able to post a brief comment about the article. All community members will be able to post their brief comments here; but if you feel you have more to say on the subject then consider starting a new thread in the Discussion Zone or send your opinion to your community editor.

Again, please adhere to our Acceptable Use Policy.

Future community developments

This is just the beginning for your professional nursing community. We are planning future community enhancements in order to open up more communications channels for you, and new and better ways of staying in contact with our members. We will make you aware of new developments as soon as we can.