RCN Education Commission

Lord Willis has said that 'it is absolutely imperative that nurses are provided with the right education and skills to equip them for the role'. Peter Carter believes that nursing education (pre-registration) should be examined so that it can be improved in ways that will facilitate better care. Key to the current debate that is going on, is that compassion and dedication to the profession need to be strengthened. I am particularly interested in these areas - and I believe that most students are compassionate and are working towards their qualification for the right reason. However, what the debate continues to highlight is the need to ensure that we bring people on to our courses that have the potential to achieve not just the academic requirements, but also the development of those characteristics that somehow 'make' a nurse. I am a strong advocate of the need to ensure that nursing students are educated to degree level - and for that reason we must ensure that we select intelligent people with the capacity to achieve the intellectual requirements for nursing. As well as that, we need to find ways to select people with the potential to enhance care continually, people who are strong advocates of the profession and the patients (and others) that they work with, and people who will have the ability to lead the practice of the future. We cannot, of course, leave all these things to the process of selection. Our education must provide the environment to allow people to flourish and to grow personally and professionally. I am certainly not complacent and will always strive to improve my own practice as an educator, but I do feel that the educators that I work with and that I know are all committed to ensuring that the students who exit are programmes are the best nurses that they can be.