University scheme fast-tracks healthcare assistants into nursing roles

Staff at a trust in Northumbria are being fast-tracked into nursing roles.

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and Northumbria University have joined forces to offer healthcare assistants and other NHS staff an 18-month undergraduate nurse training programme which leads to an honours degree in nursing.

The institutions believe they are the first in the country to offer a scheme of this kind, which allows the students to have their prior experience and learning accredited (a process known as APEL - accreditation of prior experiential learning). This means they can complete the degree in half the time it normally takes.

Ten recruits have started the programme, with plans to enrol a second cohort of ten in September. The first cohort includes healthcare assistants (HCAs), a medical secretary and a clerical assistant from the trust. All the students must have prior experience as healthcare assistants among other requirements.

The trust said students must go through a ‘rigorous four-stage accreditation process’ and will have substantial experience and previous academic study in nursing and healthcare. They must provide written evidence of clinical experience, have a foundation degree in a healthcare subject, and provide a portfolio of skills developed while working as a healthcare assistant, such as gaining the care certificate or a NVQ level 3.

Those completing the programme, which has been approved by the Nursing and Midwifery Council, will be guaranteed jobs with Northumbria Healthcare.

The trust’s interim executive director of nursing Debbie Reape, said: ‘Like every NHS organisation in the country, we continue to face real recruitment pressures and must continually look at innovative ways to secure our future nursing workforce.

‘By working in partnership with Northumbria University to train our own nurses we will not only be growing our own workforce and creating opportunities for our own staff, we will be able to have nurses who share our values and put patients at the heart of everything they do.’

The training includes classroom-based teaching, simulated clinical skills and work placements in hospitals and the community.

Jenni Thompson, a nursing assistant in the maternity unit at Hexham General Hospital who is on the course, said she had planned to do a nursing degree in the near future, but this opportunity was ‘too good to miss’.

The Shape of Caring review into nurse education, published by Lord Willis last year, recommended that HCAs be offered APEL to count for up to 50 per cent of the undergraduate degree.

Health Education England accepted all the review’s recommendations and is taking steps to implement them, including setting up a group to develop flexible routes into nursing.