On 25th January 2022, the Florence Nightingale Foundation (FNF) in collaboration with North Middlesex University Hospitals NHS Trust (NMUH) is launching a pilot student leadership programme for nine student nurses and midwives. Supported by City University of London, the University of Hertfordshire and Middlesex University, the successful nine student leaders will embark on a practice based bespoke leadership programme which includes mentorship from NMUH FNF Scholars. It will equip them with the skills and knowledge to tackle real workplace issues while having a deeper understanding of themselves and their impact on patient care. Hear from Colette Datt, Associate Director of Nursing at NMUH and FNF Scholar on this practice placement innovation.
This exciting and trailblazing programme will absolutely improve and enhance the personal & professional experiences of student nurses, improving their self-awareness, political & emotional intelligence, enabling more effective and constructive working with others. The mentorship offered by senior nurses from within the hospital where they have their placements will enable a robust support structure as they navigate their first year as student nurses whilst reflecting on their placements and synergistically developing their leadership capacity and capability.
The development of a Leadership Programme for Student Interns is a commitment and a proactive response to a prompt from a challenge, from our Chief Nursing Officer Ruth May, when she asked us as a group of registered nurses and midwives to: ‘look after our young nurses & midwives’.
I was very aware as a senior paediatric nurse leader, from my coproduction work with children and young people and a cohort of very diverse student and early career nurses the very impressive, diverse and essential contribution to patient outcomes they as a group enabled. I found myself so enthused by their brilliant ideas, spontaneity and energy. I remembered my student nurse days and I similarly had so much to contribute and as a student/newly registered nurse (NRN) was absolutely on the front line with patients to hear their voices but I didn’t have the confidence, the know how or encouragement to contribute my ideas to improve patient outcomes.
My personal FNF journey began in 2019 when I was delighted to be selected to do an Aspiring Nurse Director scholarship at the renowned FNF. I so wished I had the opportunity of an FNF scholarship as a student nurse. The synergy and empowerment of FNF totally reignited my passion for nursing & gave me the confidence to continue to fulfil my ambitions to strengthen & expand the nursing voice, especially the voice of student and early career nurses.
I was fortunate to have a discussion with the brilliant CEO of FNF, Greta, during my course and I talked to her about my ambition to enable equitable recruitment of people from all genres of society into nursing. I was keen for young people in schools and student nurses to be able to benefit from the leadership development and the unique personal bespoke mentorship programme from a more senior nurse offered by FNF so that they would supported to become nurses and be able to successfully influence from an early stage in their nursing/midwifery career and transfer their learning into other contexts and platforms, so they would be able to exercise their authority and impact on change as students when they became registered nurses. My chief nurse at NMUH had personally encouraged and supported nurses at NMUH to embrace FNF leadership programmes. Greta and Sarah were supportive and encouraging, and a collaborative engagement between FNF and my Trust NMUH was enabled. This was important as the students needed to have support from our talented FNF scholars who would inspire, nurture and support them and the programme would remain sustainable within the host organisation. The collaboration proceeded to HEI collaboration with Middlesex, Hertfordshire and City Universities as the Trust’s feeder universities as they recruited our student nurses and also offered funding for the programme.
The proposal we are so excited to be launching is a co-created (with student and NRNs) bespoke hybrid leadership development programme. It was important to us that the content of the programme was accessible and relevant to those at the start of their nursing and midwifery careers. Our aim is that our student leaders fully immerse themselves in this opportunity, recognising themselves as leaders of right now not 5 or 10 years into the future, and the impact on patient care they can have.
Follow Colette on Twitter @datt_colette