The apprenticeship programme, which is designed to train nursing associates working everywhere from emergency wards to prisons into full clinical practitioners, has been launched to alleviate the pressure on healthcare teams across the region and UK.
The first cohort on the University’s Registered Nurse Degree Apprenticeship began their training last week. 12 nurse apprentices from Cygnet joined team members from University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) NHS Foundation Trust and Practice Plus Group (Health in Justice) in the first cohort of 42 apprentices. All three organisations worked in collaboration with the University to develop the programme, with input from service users and current nursing students and apprentices.
Crucially, the course enables students to qualify in 18 months, compared with the three years it would take to complete a Registered Nurse degree from scratch.
The University’s Deputy Dean, Marina Kendrick, RN said: “Upskilling Registered Nursing Associates into full Registered Nurses is imperative to meet spiralling regional demand.
“There are around 48,000 nursing vacancies waiting to be filled nationwide, with 19% of these in the West Midlands.
“Registered Nursing Associates bridge the gap between healthcare support workers and Registered Nurses to reduce waiting times, delivering hands-on, person-centred care as part of a multidisciplinary team.”
Suzanne Smith, Cygnet’s Apprenticeship Manager, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to see our latest Nurse Associates go onwards and upwards to achieve their goal to become registered mental health nurses. The consistency they bring to the care of our service users and residents will be enhanced with their skill set and experience of having been on a pathway from support workers, to nurse associates and on to be fully qualified nurses.”
Mandy Blanchard, Cygnet’s Head of Learning and Development, said: “Working in partnership with University College Birmingham to train our own nurses gives us the opportunity to grow our own workforce, creating opportunities for our own staff to become fully qualified nurses.
“This is a fantastic way of educating and training future nurses using a workplace-based coaching model to support their teaching and learning, keeping quality of care at the forefront. In only 18 months we will have qualified nurses who share our values and put our service users and residents at the heart of everything they do.”