Student nurses in the primary care network: a pilot

Abstract

Shaun Heath, Rebecca Wilcox and Silvia Leonelli discuss how South East London developed a hub and spoke placement pilot to place students in primary care networks, rather than with individual practices With support from Capital Nurse, primary care in South East London developed a hub and spoke placement pilot to support student nurses in a primary care network (PCN). Two groups of students were placed in two PCN's, one in an inner London borough (PCN 1) and another in an outer London borough (PCN 2). Our pilot had substantial benefits for the students, the assessors/supervisors, the PCN and, ultimately, the future development of the primary care workforce. We advocate developing strong nurse leadership within the PCN to support and grow the educational unit, and we recommend that recurrent funding be made available to support this and the preceptorship programmes within the Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STP)/Integrated Care System (ICS).