Armour for practice: increasing first placement resilience in student nurses

The retention of nurses in practice is a critical component to ensure there is a sufficient workforce to meet the demands of modern day NHS. The 2016/2017 Health Education England commissioning plan includes contingencies to try to assuage this, however, Adult Nursing, has been identified as an area most at risk of not fulfilling the necessary targets. Hence a call for a systemic approach, by other parties, which not only includes retention of trained staff by recruiting organisations, but points to the responsibilities of training institutions to mitigate the loss of students on courses (HEE 2016). The likelihood of student nurses remaining in training is usually influenced by their experience in the practice setting (Crombie et al 2013), and thus the university provides preparation for practice sessions. Nonetheless, student nurses can find the journey from theory to practice personally and professionally challenging, with first placement experience being one of the critical factors in determining whether a student chooses to remain on the programme (Cooper et al 2015). To develop resilience, a joint problem based workshop between the university and practice partner was devised with a primary focus to increase confidence amongst first placement students.