Cash for student placements will help promote primary care jobs

Abstract

Primary care organisations in England could be given cash for providing practice placements to nursing students as part of plans to boost nurse numbers in community settings. Health Education England is exploring the idea of standardised payments to primary care organisations that offer placements. Its director of nursing Lisa Bayliss-Pratt said that if more trainee nurses completed community placements they might seek jobs in primary care after qualifying, instead of taking the traditional route into secondary care. Traditionally, acute trusts have received payments but there have been wide regional variations, resulting in an uneven distribution of students and a lack of opportunities for nurses to gain experience of the community sector, said Dr Bayliss-Pratt. She made the comments at a Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) conference in London last week on providing health care in patients’ homes. The comments followed a question from the audience asking what was being done to attract more nurses into community settings. The audience member told Dr Bayliss-Pratt that some university courses for community