National standards

Accepted in part.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council already sets national standards for undergraduate degrees, but Health Education England and NHS England, in collaboration with the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the universities, will work closely together to ensure newly qualified nurses are competent at the point of registration.
This collaboration is vital because the competence of nursing students is assessed not only in the classroom by the universities, but in clinical practice by mentors and assessors who are experienced, practising NHS nurses. NHS England should ensure that Compassion in Practice, the vision and strategy for nursing in England, and its behaviours and values expressed as the ‘6Cs’, are used to assess student nurses during their clinical placements. The importance of robust mentoring and assessing of student nurses will be endorsed by NHS England so that only student nurses who are competent pass their assessments and are consequently recommended for registration. The Nursing and Midwifery Council has put a system of ‘sign off mentors’ in place so that experienced NHS nurses sign off student nurses achievements in clinical practice, and NHS England needs to ensure that mentors are sufficiently supported to make difficult decisions and confidently fail a student if necessary.
Competence at the point of registration needs to be enhanced in the first months of qualification by Health Education England, NHS England and employers giving appropriate support to newly qualified nurses. The established mechanism for this is through preceptorship, but Health Education England and NHS England will need to assure themselves that preceptorship programmes are systematically embedded and properly supported so that newly qualified nurses can grow in competence and confidence and effectively make the transition from being a student to a professional, practising registered nurse.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) undertake Education quality assurance (EdQA) to make sure that the education programmes for nurses, midwives and nursing associates meet the standards needed to prepare them to join their register.

Please see response to recommendation 152 for information on NHS England’s Education Quality Framework programme.

The NHS Long Term workforce plan sets out NHS work with regulators, education providers and students to review the structure of undergraduate degree programmes.

To provide support to preceptorship, some Health Education England Local Education and Training Boards have developed Preceptorship Standards with their stakeholders to enable service providers to have a better understanding of what good preceptorship entails.

This recommendation was accepted in part by the Government.

In the January 2014 Hard Truths report, the Government said that the Nursing and Midwifery Council had already set standards for undergraduate degrees, but Health Education England, NHS England and the Nursing and Midwifery Council would work together to ensure newly qualified nurses were competent at the point of registration. Unclear what further was done.

In the February 2015 Culture Change report, the Government said that Health Education England local education and training boards had developed preceptorship standards with their stakeholders.