What’s Happening?
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) have been going through a reform program for their education standards. Both pre-registration standards and midwifery standards have been completed, and the review of post-registration education standards, Part 3 of the register, and the role of regulation are underway. This involves a review of the requirements for part 3 of the register, SCPHN (Specialist Community Public Health Nursing) and Specialist Professional Qualifications (SPQs).
A steering group has convened to contribute to the review and help NMC define and shape the future standards for specialist education. The NMC steering group for this review had its first meeting in November and it’s already clear that there will be important decisions to make for our input to the review. FOHN is well represented as members of the steering group and will be in a good position to represent the views of the OH Nursing profession.
How You Can Contribute:
The Society of Occupational Medicine and the Faculty of Occupational Health Nurses have joined forces to open up the debate and discussion and seek your views on these questions. The opportunity for this conversation is now, and responses will be collated to feed into the work of the NMC steering group. It is imperative that as a professional group, the views are representative of where Occupational Health nursing is at present and what we foresee as requirements to future-proof the professionalism and quality of our specialty.
Some questions to consider:
- Do we keep the current standards or should they change?
- Should anything replace them if they aren’t being perceived as useful?
- Who should be the approval body for these standards?
- What role do regulations play in OH?
These questions are fundamental to enable us to reflect, maybe even for the first time, on how we sustain quality in nursing and improving recruitment and retention to the OH nursing specialty.
The below survey is the opportunity for all OH nurse practitioners to share their feedback whether SCPHN registered or not. The more responses collected, the more representation there will be of all views vital to the development of this profession. It will also help us to focus our work on progressing, improving and enhancing standards in OH nursing practice and education. Our overall aim is to secure our specialty for the future.
Take the SCPHN Occupational Health Survey
The survey will take just a few minutes to complete.
Please go to: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/L8NDTFS
The survey, produced by FOHN and SOM, will close on December 31, 2019 with the steering group reviewing findings in early January.