It is increasingly apparent that, particularly with new policies focussing on public health, and GPs taking a lead role in commissioning (Department of Health (DH), 2011a; DH, 2011b), a greater proportion of services will be community-based. Inevitably, more newly registered nurses will be need to be recruited into these roles, especially with 27% of the community workforce more than 50 years old (Ball and Pike, 2009), and with this in mind, universities have started to provide primary care placements for students throughout their training. However, despite this, the majority of newly qualified staff still begin their careers on a ward. Discussion with my peers suggests that they feel hospital nurses spend more time directly caring for patients and consequently have a more fulfilling job. Although I have very much enjoyed my community placements, I understand their concerns. I came into child health nursing with the express intention of working in the community, yet working with an excellent team of health visitors almost changed my mind. My first placement was with them, between January and March 2010, and I went back to them between October and December of the same year after a hospital placement. The clinic was almost unrecognizable: over the summer, a member of staff had been moved to another locality without being replaced, the team’s caseload had been restructured, and the already daunting amount of paperwork involved had shot up (for example, two different forms recording roughly the same information had to be filled out at a new birth visit). Although the team were still passionate about providing care, they were no longer able to give vulnerable families the support they needed. An additional problem, at least from my perspective, was that although the team were fantastic and made an effort to help me to develop my skills, it was often impractical. In an environment when demands on time were already so high, supervising a student to do something rather slowly (and with lots of questions) was not only inconvenient but often impossible. One of the things by which I was most impressed during my first placement was the enthusiasm that the staff, some of whom had been health visitors for 20 or 30 years, still felt for their jobs. It was an enthusiasm that I saw in all the teams I encountered, from practice nurses to the homeless healthcare team and everything in between. Their passion was infectious: I found myself loving my placement and wishing it were longer. By my second placement there, however, elevated stress levels and poor morale had seriously affected the working environment. Staff were still going the extra mile to help families, but they seemed disillusioned and it was easy to see why. I was left to believe that, were I to go into the community, I would be placed in a position where I was unable to give people the time they needed because of the focus on meeting targets and completing paperwork. Cutting community posts when the reforms currently being discussed highlight their importance is counterproductive. One of the possible advantages of the reforms is increased recognition of community nurses, but this recognition needs to be accompanied by funding to allow adequate staffing. The recruitment drive for health visitors (DH, 2011c) has encouraged me to reconsider my original intention of working in the community. However, the problems I encountered were not unique to the team I was working in, and most services are not enjoying the same emphasis on recruitment that health visiting currently is. Many of those who I rang during my placements in an attempt to arrange a day’s visit did not have the time or staff to facilitate students, even though this is a requirement of the NMC Code (NMC, 2008). Hopefully, the reforms proposed will go some way towards alleviating the pressures staff are currently under. Unless something is done to release time for community teams to care for their patients and equip the next generation of nurses, students and newly registered nurses will continue to perceive ward-based jobs as more rewarding, instead of embracing the rich variety of roles available in primary care. BJCN