University receives £40,000 to improve learning around mental health nursing

Robert Gordon University's School of Nursing and Midwifery, in partnership with NHS Grampian Mental Health Services, has been granted £40,000 to develop nurse education practices that will ultimately improve services for mental health service users.

The funding from NHS Education for Scotland will enable lecturers, alongside their NHS partners, to implement and evaluate an innovative approach to learning in practice for mental health nursing students. This new approach is designed to enrich the quality of student learning in clinical practice, promote professional socialisation and enhance mental health service users' engagement with students.

Since the publication of the Scottish Government's Nation Review of Mental Health Nursing in Scotland (1996), mental health nursing lecturers and practitioners have been working together to develop the pre-registration nursing curriculum for mental health nursing, fifty percent of which must me delivered in practice. The next stage is to implement the approach they have developed, which will further strengthen the partnership the University and NHS Grampian.

The new plans mean that, whilst on placement, students will be based within the same two services for the duration of their studies. This will help to make their development in practice more seamless, with the same mentors and the same setting in which to learn. It is also anticipated that the relationships students develop with mental health service users will be more beneficial because they will be working together over a much longer period of time.

The learning opportunities available within main placements will be extended when students access spin-off experiences which will reflect a range of NHS and non-NHS services and support systems. As a result, students are expected to gain a deeper understanding of the delivery of mental health care from the perspective of the service users they are working alongside.

Debbie Banks, Programme Leader for undergraduate nursing at Robert Gordon University explained: "We are very excited about the new approach and the opportunities it will bring for students and their mentors to work together over time. We believe that service users will also benefit in that the quantity of student nurses they will be exposed to over a period of time will be less and the length of time they will be working with the same student nurses will be increased."

Robert Gordon University is one of three institutions across Scotland to receive funding from NHS Education for Scotland for the implementation and evaluation of innovative approaches to practice learning for student nurses. Angie Wood, Practice Education Facilitator for Mental Health Nursing added: "The feedback from clinical areas has been very positive and mentors are looking forward to supporting students over the whole course of their training, helping them to reach their full potential."