Distance learning give opportunities for all Scottish nurses

by Stephen Naysmith© The Herald
Originally published: 29.10.2008

‘I thought I’d be a community nurse until the day I retired,” says Sue Sloan. “But by seeing that I needed a challenge and taking opportunities, my whole career has changed.”

Sloan, now the lead practitioner for clinical leadership across Lothian, is talking about her involvement in the clinical leadership programme at the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which she took part in during 2001 and 2002.

“I was in the first cohort of the programme. My role has completely transformed since I took part in it.

“If it hadn’t been for that, I would have been out in the community as a district nurse, I am absolutely 100% sure about that.”

The training enabled Sloan to network with people from across Scotland, sharing experiences of leadership development, and implementing what she was learning about at a local level.

“Although you were with your board and participating locally, you had the benefits of networking nationally and that to me has been a massive positive thing in my learning,” she adds.

Sloan is now working in partnership with the Open University (OU) to deliver a management development programme for health and social care professionals.

It will be part of a new alliance between the RCN and the OU which aims improve the quality of education on offer to the profession. The partnership will be officially launched at the Scottish Parliament today.

It is intended to deliver improved access to high quality health care training by uniting the OU’s part-time learning options with the RCN’s distance learning courses. Beneficiaries are particularly expected to include nurses working in rural areas, such as newly-qualified Tina Watt, of Lochgilphead.

Earlier this month Watt passed the last of her exams to qualify as a registered nurse. Watt, who left school without qualifications, is one of the first students to complete the OU’s pre-registration nursing course in Scotland, but says her achievement would have been impossible without the flexibility provided by distance learning.

Having started working as a nursing assistant in Lochgilphead when she was 19, it was soon suggested to Watt that she might want to train to be a registered nurse. But she says she rejected the idea, as it would have meant studying in Paisley, away from her young family.

“I just thought I couldn’t leave my home and go away for three years,” she says. “I have got two boys, and so I carried on working part-time – I didn’t want to be a part-time mum."

But several years later, Watt heard about a new initiative to help nurses do their pre-registration training through distance learning. “I saw a wee poster up to say there is training through the Open University.”

She thought long and hard about it, she says, but then took the plunge: “I said to one of the other nursing assistants, why don’t we do it? And so we both put our applications in.”

Some of her workmates were sceptical, she adds. “At first colleagues were saying how can you do an OU course to be a nurse?” But in fact, Watt has found other staff members have been impressed by how much practical knowledge she and her fellow pre-registration students have acquired.

“Quite often you would have a practical course to do and you had a lot to do as well on your placements. And we had to provide them with hard evidence of what we had learned while we were there. You are not just getting boxes ticked.”

She admits she didn’t realise how much study would be involved, but believes the hard work has been worth it.

“You need to be really motivated to do this – you are spending a lot of your time studying.”

Watt was eligible for support from her employer and from the government, so she has not had to pay her fees. “Because it is a new initiative to try to get nurses in rural areas, it’s been funded through the Scottish Government. I have not had to pay for a single thing. I couldn’t have afforded it any other way.”

Looking ahead, Watt believes the partnership between the OU and the Royal College of Nursing will help even more nurses in rural areas to train or top up their skills. “I do think it will be a great thing because there are people in remote areas who have had to move away,” she says. “The OU can reach you wherever you are.”

The new partnership is particularly intended to help nursing staff such as Watt, from remote areas who may previously have had no option but to leave their communities – and health care jobs – in order to study.

Meanwhile the RCN and OU claim the range of courses on offer will be attractive to staff at all levels who want to develop their careers, from health care support workers to senior practitioners. For NHS boards, part-time flexible learning offers considerable advantages, supporting their employees to develop their skills “on-the-job” to meet the changing needs of the health service and fill gaps in an ageing workforce. Part-time study also has the potential to enable more students to stay with their studies and avoid student debt by earning as they are learning. Currently 26.4% of nursing students drop out of courses in Scotland.

Peter Syme, Director of the Open University in Scotland, said the new partnership would improve both accessibility and quality in health care education. "The alliance gives us the opportunity to bring together Scotland’s leading provider of part-time learning with the foremost professional organisation for nurses,” he said. “This gives us the reach and the expertise to contribute directly to Scotland’s skills, employer engagement and health care agendas.

“By working in partnership with the RCN we will be able to help health care employees at all levels and from all backgrounds to support the development of a competent and flexible nursing workforce, with clear benefits for patient care.”

The RCN has helped to pioneer continuing professional development opportunities for nurses and has offered its members professional development through education and training programmes at every stage of their careers, for both registered nurses and health care support workers.