Exploring placement pathways in nurse education.

As community-based care has developed in line with current policy towards integrated care, some hospital placement capacity for student health professionals has been lost as a result of service reorganisation. However, student nurses and allied health professionals need to gain a broad range of experience to prepare them for the complex and rapidly changing environments they will be entering as qualified professionals. Placement pathways constitute a means of offering the knowledge and skills to enter the profession in challenging times. This study explored, by means of a literature search and interviews with key stakeholders, the challenges and opportunities offered by placement pathways. The findings are presented and the work being done as a result, including an the introduction of an electronic placement pathway tool, are discussed.

Community engagement: from a professional to a public perspective.

Community engagement is a policy initiative to promote public health, and represents government aspirations to develop a healthy and fair society. It is a recent addition to a succession of policy initiatives that are designed to encourage members of the public to become more engaged in the promotion and maintenance of their optimum health. While earlier policies focused on individual behaviour, community engagement considers the actions that communities can take to promote health. Community engagement represents a shift of emphasis from individualistic health care to public health. To date, NHS initiatives that aim to involve the public in their own health care have often been limited and tokenistic. Healthcare professionals have been identified as a barrier to the development of community engagement, demonstrating a reluctance to share decision-making and power with the public, allowing them a limited voice in healthcare matters. When the public are able to make meaningful decisions, community engagement can lead to substantial health gains. This paper considers some of the issues that need to be addressed in order for community engagement to progress and become an effective tool to enhance health and wellbeing.

'A Juggling Act': an analysis of the impact of providing clinical placements for pre-registration students on the organisation of community nursing and health visiting work.

Modernising policies for the NHS have aimed to strengthen the nursing workforce through enhancing professional roles and increasing the numbers of pre-registration students. The current emphasis upon community based health care has led to an increase in the quantity and complexity of the workload for community nurses and health visitors, whilst at the same time educational developments have led to additional responsibilities supporting nursing students on community placements. These issues are explored in this paper which reports findings from a qualitative study in a large city based Primary Care Trust (PCT). The findings demonstrate that the provision of clinical placements for nursing students leads community nurses and health visitors to juggle the demands of their workload with meeting the needs of nursing students and clients. This requires a (re)-organisation of their work, often impacting on the wider team. Additionally the nature of community nursing/health visiting work, shaped by time, space, resources and location, constrains opportunities for clinical learning. If government policies are to be implemented successfully, community nursing and health visiting staff require appropriate support to enable them to fulfil their educational and clinical roles.

Two levels of practice: meeting professional or workforce needs.

The introduction of Project 2000 raised the stature of nursing education to that of the university-based training for other healthcare professionals. Historically, nursing workforce needs have been satisfied by the manipulation of the requirements to enter training, different levels of training and by the recruitment of trained nurses from abroad. This article examines issues regarding the level of training and education required to enable nurses to be fit for practice.