The Scotsman

Defusing nursing’s ticking timebomb

Open University students can study for a degree while staying in their healthcare role,

- writes Liz Sturley

The current shortfall in nursing staff across Scotland has recently been widely reported. It is an issue facing the healthcare workforce across the whole of the UK and Europe which the World Health Organisati­on has described as a “ticking timebomb”.

Multiple strategic solutions are required but here at The Open University (OU) in Scotland we believe an important pillar is providing more accessible routes that open up nursing to more people.

Our Future Nurse Programme provides paths for those already working in healthcare roles to become registered nurses. Uniquely participan­ts can study for a degree while staying in their healthcare support role, so they continue to earn while they learn, and employers retain talent and capacity in the sector.

The programme has proven to be a resilient model. It is estimated that as many as one in four student nurses leave before the end of their nursing programme citing finances and lack of understand­ing of what studying for a nursing degree may entail, but with the OU nursing degree we have over 90 per cent of participan­ts completing successful­ly. Degrees are approved by the Nursing Midwifery Council and all four fields of nursing practice offered: adult, mental health, learning disability, and children and young people.

Healthcare support workers make up 28 per cent of the nursing and midwifery workforce. This means there are over 19,000 skilled staff with the potential to be qualified nurses. There is no minimum education qualificat­ion requiremen­t to be a healthcare support worker, so many of them lack the qualificat­ions required for most pre-registrati­on nursing programmes.

A fundamenta­l part of the OU’S open access ethos is that we are open to everyone, regardless of qualificat­ions or location. We provide access and additional support to Future Nurse programme applicants to help them meet the minimum numeracy and literacy criteria required by the Nursing and Midwifery Council. It means we can provide life-changing opportunit­ies for people who might never have dreamed of becoming registered nurses.

Leeanne Macpherson from Cumnock, Ayrshire, is one such nurse. She left school at aged 16 to work in a jeans factory. She eventually went to college to do an HNC in Social Care which led to work in the public sector supporting individual­s with mental health issues. However, it was when she began working for the NHS as a Nursing Assistant that she felt like she’d finally found her “vocation”, and this in turn opened up a path to achieve an OU degree in Mental Health Nursing.

With three children to support, Leeanne says this wouldn’t have been possible without the OU’S flexibilit­y: “The OU course allowed me to remain employed full-time whilst studying. This meant that there was financial stability for my family whilst I was working towards my degree.”

Leeanne’s degree costs were covered by the Scottish Government which also provides funding to cover her role when she was away on placement and study leave. From October 2023 we will be working with all of Scotland’s health boards and many independen­t health care providers on the programme, which is particular­ly effective in remote and rural areas.

We believe we can work further with health boards to develop their nursing capacity, building on the success of our programme and scaling it up to provide more effective routes

into the profession. Informatio­n sessions to attract new entrants for our 2023 Future Nurse Programme are being delivered across Scotland this month and in January.

Find out more at: www.open.ac.uk/ scotland/partnershi­ps/employers/ nursing/info-sessions.

Liz Sturley is the Nation Manager for Scotland in The Open University’s School of Health, Wellbeing and Social Care

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↑ Leeanne Macpherson graduated with a BSC (Hons) Mental Health Nursing.
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