RCN to evaluate pilots on pre-degree care experience

Published: 14 May 2013

The Royal College of Nursing is to form part of a national steering group evaluating a pilot scheme for nursing students to spend time working as health care assistants (HCAs) before taking up their degree. The group will include nursing leaders from the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the Care Quality Commission, NHS England, the Department of Health, Public Health England, NHS Employers and the NHS Trust Development Authority. It has been set up by Health Education England in response to the Government’s proposal that student nurses should spend up to a year working on the frontline in order to receive NHS funding for their degree.

The steering group will oversee a pilot programme, working with partners across the NHS and higher education, to see how to take forward these proposals and assess the most appropriate timescale.

Pilots are likely to involve up to 200 nursing students on paid placements across the country from this autumn. The steering group will also be responsible for evaluation in areas including the ability to test for values and behaviours and reductions in attrition rates.

RCN Chief Executive & General Secretary Dr Peter Carter said the pilots will be crucial to answering some of the key questions associated with the proposal, such as how it will work in practice, how it will be funded and who will mentor the students working as HCAs.

One of the RCN’s main concerns to date has been the 12 months it has been proposed nursing students first spend working as HCAs, which is much longer than the three months originally suggested by Robert Francis in his seminal report into failings at Mid Staffordshire. 

“The time has come to get to work and rigorously evaluate what has been seen by many as the Government’s flagship proposal in response to the Francis report,” Dr Carter said. “We will also take the time to listen to patients about how they feel the education system should work and the experiences that they believe are essential. The RCN plans to be at the very heart of all this.”

Though concerns have previously been expressed about the proposal, Dr Carter stressed that the RCN is an organisation that seeks to work with the Government, not against it, in order to achieve positive change for both staff and patients.

“The RCN wants our nurses of the future to be able to deal with all that the profession will demand of them and we need a system that recognises the need for compassion and high quality care,” he added. “We agree with the need for those intending to commence nurse training to have a realistic understanding of what the job entails, to have the right values and to have the resilience to work in today’s NHS. We look forward to this crucial process.”