THIS is an exciting time for everybody involved in the nursing profession, according to Kathleen Mac Lellan, assistant director of nursing at St James's Hospital in Dublin.
The new learning system, which is already in operation in most training hospitals, "will open up opportunities for all nurses," she says. On the training front, the changing education system is re-shaping the face of nursing.
Although it will be an exciting time for upcoming students, Mac Lellan also believes "they are going to have an awful lot more pressure on them" with the increased academic input. "It's going to be tough on them."
The award of diploma and ultimately degree in nurse training is a very positive step and raises the professional status of nursing, she says. "It will give nurse training the academic accreditation which other health professionals already have," she says. "The changes will enhance the service that is given to patients."
The rate at which the country's schools of nursing are converting from the traditional "apprenticeship" model to the non-salaried full-time student model depends very much on the availability of resources. However, the pace of introduction has been much faster than expected to date and, by the time current school-goers start scanning the newspapers for advertisements for nursing places in April, all of the 16 general training hospitals may be included under one advertisement from the Nursing Applications Centre.
In St James's Hospital, Dublin, for example, the first students of the newly-developed diploma course will be coming onto the wards in March for "their first clinical experience", Mac Lellan says. In the past student nurses were part of a hospital's workforce. "It was an apprenticeship-type system," she says.
Today students doing college-associated courses are no longer part of the hospital workforce. They are participating to learn. "It will be a model of learning," says Mac Lellan, where the clinical experience of students will be supervised, in contrast to the traditional system.
The new training system in all spheres of nursing means that in future students will not be paid a salary. Instead they will get a non-means-tested maintenance grant from a health board or voluntary hospital and will have full student status.
However, holiday arrangements for student nurses will not be typical of long three to four month breaks which university-goers generally enjoy.
The three-year diploma course was started in Galway in 1994. The first group to qualify with the diploma will graduate this autumn. Graduates will have the option of continuing their studies for a further year to obtain a degree.
For nurses who have already qualified, there are facilities to allow them gain access to the degree programme. Dublin City University has an add-on degree year which registered nurses can do, either through distance learning or attendance.
At the moment there are 12 college-associated diploma courses for general nursing. Students apply for these through the Nursing Applications Centre. The total number of places available on the general programme this year is roughly 500, while 15 places will be available on the psychiatric programme.
Post-Leaving Certificate courses are an increasingly popular route into nurse training. Some colleges combine pre-nursing with other studies such as childcare or community and health care, or they may allow students to repeat some Leaving Cert subjects.
