Student Nurse

scorpio_princess

Girlzmum wrote: »

Nursing training is a vocational training - you spend 50% of your time in class and 50% working full time so it is very unlike teaching or medicine.

I think you'll find that teaching is vocational too (as is medicine!). You don't train to become a teacher or doctor by sitting in a classroom for years! I don't know the exact school/uni ratio for PGCE, but I think it's something like 24 weeks out of 38 spent actually in the classroom. So to imply that nursing is the only vocational course is a bit wrong really - check your facts!

GlasweJen

I live with a nursing student and to be honest I don't think nursing students should get any more financial help than other students. For starters I need to do more anatomy and physiology for my course than my nursing student friend does, I need to write more essays (her stuff is mostly log books with 3 or 4 essays per semester), I am in uni Monday til Friday 9 - 5 doing lab work and the rest while my nursing student friend can call up the hospital she's "learning" in and rearrange her uni times to suit herself only having to actually go to uni once or twice a month for seminars. She's never had to sit up til 4am with 5 deadlines in the same week and the biology I'm learning goes over her head. The best of it is I'm studying to be qualified to analyse blood/urine/stool samples and they're going to trust someone who barely has a grasp of 2nd year biology with patients? No wonder the NHS is in tatters.

Oh and before I get accused of not knowing the issues, my friend is high up in the student commitee of the RCN.

ko1obos

Im 23 and I currently live in Middlesbrough with my partner. We are both going to full-time university next year (she is going to Manchester and its Liverpool for me). I am originally from the Wirral so I will be returning home and staying with my parents (they do not earn a large income).

Obviously my parents will help me out with money troubles and I'm sure someone will mention that if I get any replies but I will be studying Diagnostic Radiography or Radiotherapy (decisions, decisions) and I will be applying for an NHS bursary.

Using the bursary calculator, here: http://www.nhspa.gov.uk/sgu/bursarycalculator/default.asp I will recieve £3452. I know that student nurses work hard, as do students from nearly all degree courses but surely if I was to study Diagnostic Radiography then I should get the same as someone studying nursing, bearing in mind that the hours are roughly the same.

Now I'll sit back and watch myself get slated.
Enjoy.

GlasweJen

I completely agree, biomedical sciences is hardly a walk in the park. I have to find lab placements on my own i.e. not given to me by uni and I get a bursary of just over £1000 non NHS type.

ka7e

DD is a student midwife in London. Her student loan doesn't even cover the cost of her room in Halls (she has to pay for 48 weeks).
Her bursary "pays" her for working 825 hours p.a. (22weeks x 37.5hrs), which works out at approx £4.18 per hour.

Student nurses and midwives are supposed to be supernumery, but many hospitals rely on them to maintain basic standards of care. Six months into her training, she has already delivered 6 babies and has run booking and follow-up clinics.

Attendance on placement has to be 100%, any missed days (including time off for illness and family bereavements) have to be made up during "holidays". Internal exams are also scheduled during "reading weeks", when most students are free to go home for revision.

She loves the course and has wanted to be a midwife since she was 14. I just hope there will be a job for her when she qualifies.

DrFluffy

5 weeks in to my O&G placement, I delivered a babs! It was so, so cool!!! (and frickin' scary!)

Where is your daughter training Ka7e? The midwifery students on my O&G placement were really, really nice

PS I wish we got reading weeks!!!

john.xs

Oh and before I get accused of (not knowing the issues), my friend is (high up in the student commitee )of the( RCN.)

glaswejen - that above statement sums it all up really!

GlasweJen

Sorry I meant that she's the student advisor to the RCN for the area but I didn't want to post that without making sure that there was more than one of the student advisors, I didn't want to inadvertantly drop a name there. She attends all the RCN meetings as well as the counsels and local meetings here and all over the UK. Even she thinks that the bursary is adequate as it is and if they increased the bursary they would end up increasing the hours spent on placement meaning those who do have a job would end up losing that source of income.

As a student nurse you can sign up for work with the staff bank, not only does it pay well but you can get experience of working in wards where you may not get placements.

sandy_fraser

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pinkie_pie

GlasweJen wrote: »

I live with a nursing student and to be honest I don't think nursing students should get any more financial help than other students. For starters I need to do more anatomy and physiology for my course than my nursing student friend does, I need to write more essays (her stuff is mostly log books with 3 or 4 essays per semester), I am in uni Monday til Friday 9 - 5 doing lab work and the rest while my nursing student friend can call up the hospital she's "learning" in and rearrange her uni times to suit herself only having to actually go to uni once or twice a month for seminars. She's never had to sit up til 4am with 5 deadlines in the same week and the biology I'm learning goes over her head. The best of it is I'm studying to be qualified to analyse blood/urine/stool samples and they're going to trust someone who barely has a grasp of 2nd year biology with patients? No wonder the NHS is in tatters.

Oh and before I get accused of not knowing the issues, my friend is high up in the student commitee of the RCN.

This post has made me really cross!!!! Not entirely surre what you are training be specifically but a lot of professions need a strong grasp on biology. For example, doctors. Who incidentally as a patient I'd be more than content with knowing they have more medical knowledge than my nurse. Who has clinical knowledge, which is different. Nursing is also still (only just) a diploma course as well. Don't forget when most nurses qualify, they don't have a degree. The NHS only funds the diploma.

I can't comment on your friend's course, but at mine we don't get to request shifts. We do 40 hour weeks, sometimes 11 or more shifts in a row. In my last block of 13 weeks I only had one weekend off, which I'd had to request for a wedding where I was a key person. I've had more than 5 deadlines in a week before, had plently of essays to had in with the 'log book' as you call it (although ours is far more than that) and as for staying up to 4am, well I think that's more of a personal time management issue than specifically relating to the coursework. And our course? 4-5 days a week also. Reading weeks? Haven't had one yet. 6 weeks off summer, one christmas, one easter. Although the final week of summer holidays we are now in uni doing exams. Other friends on medical/nhs related courses? 3-4 months off for summer.

Nursing is one of very few courses where we are expected to do up to 45 weeks in uni/placement a year. We get a bursary because as previously shown it is meant to replace working part time as most will NOT get a say in placement hours, and they will not look fondly on you for doing long shifts at a hospital and then going on to work afterwards elsewhere. In fact some unis will actually specify they don't want you doing bank work during the course.

England/Uk is not the only country offering a bursary, Australia offers discounted university fees and other benefits because like here there is a shortage of nurses. It's an incentive.

The complaint about nurses biological knowledge is still making me cross. True, gone are the days when people just donned the white cap and were magically a nurse giving bedbaths and cleaning wounds. The qualified nurses I have worked with have amazing anatomical and physiological knowledge, and many have worked, and paid, for their own degrees, even multiple degrees. But nursing is still a caring profession, not a diagnostic one. :mad: