College answers call to deliver nursing course
West Highland College UHI is introducing a new access to nursing course this September in response to calls for a nursing degree to be brought to Fort William.
Potential Fort William students took to social media at the time to express their disappointment that they would not be able to study for the degree in their home town and would have to travel almost 200 miles to Stornoway or more than 60 miles to Inverness.
Elaine Stoddart, a health care assistant at Tweedale medical practice in Fort William for the past 17 years, was among those disappointed. The mother-offour from Caol wanted to study nursing but hadn’t studied for a while and wasn’t quite ready to embark on a degree programme.
College staff advised her to study an HNC in social services which she was able to do three days a week while looking after her family.
Now, after all the hard work, Elaine is finally starting a nursing degree in September.
Elaine explained: ‘I wanted to move on to a career in nursing and this course has helped me get a position as a nursing auxiliary at the Belford Hospital as well as getting me back into study, which I haven’t done since leaving school. I was very nervous, but it makes such a huge difference when you are interested in the subject.
‘I cannot believe that I am now at the stage of starting my nursing degree in September.’
Elaine said she ‘thoroughly enjoyed’ the course and is grateful for the support of the tutors.
‘It was very important to me that I was able to study this course locally as I am married with four children and would not have been able to move away to complete the course,’ she added.
‘It is fair to say that if I had not been able to study at the West Highland College UHI then things would have been so much more difficult for me to progress.’
On the back of this, West Highland College UHI is introducing an access to nursing course to allow students to start their nursing career from any one of the college’s 10 centres throughout Skye, Lochalsh and Lochaber from this September.
Claire Pardoe, curriculum area lead, explained: ‘We have been receiving inquiries for some time from students wanting to gain the right qualifications to enable them to apply for the very popular nursing qualification recently introduced by the University of the Highlands and Islands.
‘However, it can be difficult for some students who have family and work commitments to travel and study away from home.
‘So, we decided to review some of our current courses and adapt them to include further modules that will allow successful students to progress onto a nursing career.’
Applications are now open and more information can be found at whc.uhi.ac.uk/ courses.