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Impact of the Nursing and Midwifery Council Future Nurse Standards on children's nursing: A critical discussion

02 February 2024
Education
02 February 2024
Volume 5 | British Journal of Child health · Issue 1

Abstract

Edge et al explore the current concerns and ongoing debate around the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) Future Nurse: Standards of proficiency for registered nurses (2018). This article looks at the impact of the standards on changes to pre-registration children's nursing education, exploring the impact on ensuring students are equipped with the right knowledge and skills to meet children, young people and their families' needs. Central to the discussion is the importance of hearing the voice of children and young people, and families are considered central to the ongoing discussion that is integral in shaping our future nursing workforce.

Concerns have been raised that the current NMC Future Nurse Standards have become overly adult-centric in their focus. Glasper and Fallon (2021) argued that students in the field of children's nursing will be knowledgeable in nursing at the point of registration but may lack the specialist knowledge within their own field of practice. There are early indications that the quality of educational programmes is insufficient for smaller fields of nursing. Colleagues from the field of mental health, under the movement Mental Health Deserves Better (2023), presented an open letter to the NMC, claiming that the standards have led to some erosion of mental health nursing education. A move towards generic education is a significant deviation from the existing standards, which offered more robust delineation of separate skills and knowledge for each field of practice (NMC, 2010; Haslam, 2023). In the field of learning disability, the same concerns have been identified that patients need the specialist knowledge and skills of those adequately equipped to do so (Cogher, 2023). This article explores the potential impact of the education standards on children's nurses and the children and young people we care for.

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