Podcast Episode 63: Life as a mature nursing student

Okay, well, hello. I've been invited by the Lindsay Lead Club Foundation to do a podcast or indeed two podcasts from the perspective of life as a mature nursing student. I'm very happy to oblige and I'll have my penny's worth and people can make what they will of my comments. I'll start by introducing myself. My name is Jonathan, I'm a mature student in his early 50s, nearer my mid 50s actually, studying for in the second year of the Masters in Adult Nursing at a university in the East of England. I thought I devote this first podcast to my perspectives as a mature student, which perhaps might differ from possibly from younger students but of course everyone is different. I think really I get asked two questions as a mature student. One is what brought me into nursing so late in my career. Sometimes followed with, are you mad? Which I sometimes think I must be. My partner gave a slight, who sat next to me, gave a slight chuckle there. And the other one, inevitably, is what do you think about the future of nursing and nurse training given the current status of the NHS, which is in the headlines we know every day. we hear about crisis, chronic shortage of medical staff, not least nurses and so forth. So I'll address the two points first. First of all, in terms of what brings me into to nursing, I'll start with my background. I've worked in the past in quite a variety of roles. I've worked as a teacher of adults and sixth form students. I've worked as a career advisor. I've worked as an employment and trading advisor in the community and a community development worker. And more recently, perhaps my longest period of work was in social care, working specifically with adults with learning disabilities and to a lesser extent with older adults, adults, some of whom had early stage dementia or other cognitive impairments, and that was both in supported living environments, that is houses, and also in day service facilities, which is obviously where people go to engage in various activities, recreational and social and and so forth. I have had nursing on my radar really probably since the early noughties. Interestingly, since my days as a community worker in Manchester, where in an area of major neighborhood regeneration, a multidisciplinary approach was adopted to trying to address some of the issues amongst the communities in that area as part of that regeneration agenda. And I did a lot of work with health visitors, midwives and nurses who popped up in the most interesting places. I remember particularly working on developing resources to support asylum seekers and refugees and attending meetings with a church group, the chair of whom was, I wouldn't have known if I hadn't asked a registered qualified nurse. And I remember thinking, gosh, nurses get into all kinds of places. So it did really help challenge some of the stereotypes I had about nurses at that time. For one reason and another, I didn't then proceed with nursing applications. Life got in the way, I qualified as a teacher and other things happened, but it was always there. Then after a long period in social care, along came the COVID pandemic. I was lucky enough to work right through that period in supported living, which was a great privilege to be able to do that and without wanting to get sort of too misty-eyed about it, I kind of felt my contribution to the world of care and social care was very much, I don't know, strengthened and kind of revalidated for myself by that experience. And I emerged from it thinking, well, what do I really want to do. In fact, I think I actually applied for the nursing course I'm currently on actually during the third and longest of the lockdown. So there we are. So and here I am entering year two, sometimes overwhelming, always stimulating. Sometimes, as I said, wondering if I'm not completely mad, but ultimately enjoying myself. For the most part, I would definitely say I've had some wonderful placements, particularly my second placement with absolutely fantastic team of community nurses who were really were inspirational. So I've been very lucky. So that's my my background. That's how I got to be here. And I hope ultimately my varied background and my maturity, let's say, to put it politely, will give me some insights into working as a nurse and I think particularly some of the challenges facing nursing at the moment. Which brings me to my second point, looking at not so much the political context of nursing at the moment but my personal and obviously subjective perspective on nurse training at the present time, you might be aware that current arrangements for pre-registration nurse training are through a number of options. One is to complete an undergraduate degree, another is to complete a master's programme, obviously the one I'm on, and there are a couple of work-based routes into nursing which would require you first to be employed by one of the NHS trusts. Until relatively recently, and I'm sure many of you remember this, many nurses trained via a diploma route. This was phased out as it was felt by policymakers that nursing should become, I suppose, a more academicised profession and was really phased out and replaced with the degree. So that's a three year. BSC typically versus a two year diploma now. At the time, concerns were expressed and this debate, I think, really hasn't ended and probably never will. was expressed that nurses were becoming more distant from the kind of hands-on role that they tend to occupy in the public imagination. And patient groups at the time that the changes were first mooted did express this concern. For practical reasons, and I wouldn't want to express an opinion on the complexities of this subject, but I feel as a mature student, And given the context of a national shortage of nurses, I personally think it's a shame that we don't have the diploma anymore. I say this because, for getting from the perspective of a mature student, many people in the position perhaps of having a family and previous career and so on, are gonna find the prospect of doing a BSc daunting or simply feel they're really too old. going to be in a cohort of primarily much younger people. Similarly, with the Masters, they may not hold a first degree, which is necessary to do the Masters. And indeed, if they do, they may not really relish the prospects of quite an academicised, again, course. Sounds like perhaps a made up word, but I'm sure you understand what I mean. And they may not really relish the prospects of completing, for example, a dissertation. I felt certainly for the mature student, and I still feel the diploma would be an attractive route, particularly since the work based route is an uncertain one. Giving up a career, for example, to apply for a job as an HCA in the hope that you are, you have an opportunity move on to an in-work training route through a trust is a kind of uncertain path and quite a big step when you're advanced years and you perhaps feel that that you need to maximize the time available to you. So I suppose what I'm really saying is, you know, yes, let's have the masters, let's have the degree route and the work-based routes, but perhaps policymakers in my ideal world would revisit the idea of reintroducing a nursing diploma because I think it would attract more mature applicants to the nursing profession who I feel perhaps at the moment are discouraged from doing so by the routes available to them. So that's the end really of my first podcast for for LeadClub. It's gone a little longer than I expected but I hope it's given you some ideas and you may have opinions about what I've said or agree or disagree but it's been nice to have an opportunity to to talk about some of my perspectives as a mature student and as I said at the beginning I'm going to make another recording and this one will be on a an entirely different subject but again with a bit of a perspective as as a mature nursing student so many thanks.