The New Standards Of Pre-Registration Nursing Education In The UK

In England and Wales children go to Primary school or receive a home schooling at the age of 5. After primary school, the children go to Secondary (High) schools, where they stay in age of 16. Most of these secondary schools are comprehensive; free to all children but there are also selective schools which use an entrance test. Most of secondary schools pupils can stay and continue studies after age 16 for 2-3 years. Pupils study different Levels (most common A Levels) in 2 to 3 subjects and at the end of studies take exam in age 18 to 19. There is also sixth form colleges for pupils. These colleges provide both academic (study-related) and vocational (work-related) subjects. The British Government (taxpayers) is funding most of the British

The NMC underlines many significant goals in the future nursing education: life-long learning, evidence based nursing, long time spent in practice, leadership, management and team-working. One of the main subject of the new education is that the minimum academic level in field of nursing would be a bachelor´s degree. This has started in year 2013 and after that only degree level nursing education has offered in the UK. This is in-line with many other EU countries education policy. The NMC believes that nurses educated in degree level will be able to provide better care in many sectors, for example plan and evaluate effective, given evidence-based care safely and confidently and to have better skils to meet future challenges in health care. The NMC is strongly looking for future challenges in health care and they also expenct it to the nurses; skills to respond quickly to the constantly changing field of nursing and people´s needs. The standards includes also requirement for programmes length, ratio of theory to practice (split 50/50 at studying time), the nature of practice learning and range of experience. The NMC in not giving a national curriculum to the universities, it is just giving the guidelines and goals, and universities can plan their own curriculum adapting these goals and future needs of nursing and health care. The NMC guides that the curriculum must be evidence-based and reflect the latest knowledge, research, practice and technical requirements. Programmes also should be flexible and open for different kind of students. In UK, the quality of nursing is an issue of great public interest, so the demands of developing the education and listening to the peoples needs are high. (NMC