Tuesday 26 July 2011
Education - Practice partnerships
One of my areas of particular interest is the partnerships that we all strive to achieve when working together to support and develop student learning. For me at the moment, my primary area of work relates to pre-registration nursing education. With the implementation of the NMC's new standards we are developing curricula that will impact on both the type of student, and the type of practitioner, that will be in practice. To achieve a joined-up approach to the development of these curricula we absolutely must work together in real partnerships to achieve meaningful integration of theory with practice. In an edition of RCN's Edlines earlier this year, I highlighted the ongoing 'divide' that students still sometimes see between what they learn in university and what they learn in practice. How can we all work together to achieve the best fit between education and practice so as to ensure that the practitioners that we educate are the ones that will work with current practitioners to take forward service developments for the enhancement of patient care?
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Hi Ruth this is an interesting dilemma, one of the ways I am leading on within addictions is the development of a professional development Award in addictions that is primarly work based, based on the current HSC level three awards that are currently available to hca's. I have specifically taken the time to develop this concept to allow both qualified staff and unqualified alike can benefit from it , I think that the development of these kinds of awards may be part of the answer,especially if we are expecting students to qualify and take up posts within specialist services. PDA Awards or similar are the way to develop a new staff nurse into a specialist competant practioner by supplying them with work based practically assessed skills assessed by specialist practitioners in the ceild who can also act as professional mentors.
ReplyDeleteThese sorts of examples of educational practice seem to me to demonstrate real partnership working - the development of educational solutions that make measureable impacts on practice. Taking the discussion further for pre-registration is an absolute must - we have the opportunity just now given that all of us have to reapprove our currciula by 2013. The issue re specialist skills in undergraduate programmes is a challenging one - where do we start, where do we stop? In curricula that already feel 'packed' we have to find innovative solutions to the preparation of practitioners who continue to be fit for purpose but in an ever evolving healthcare context.
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