Student Nurse Placements at Great Glens
At Great Glens, we are constantly looking to educate ourselves further in mental health care, whether this is from learning from those with many years in the field, or from brand new faces that bring fresh energy with their expertise.
We have recently welcomed a number of student nurses from The University of Northampton to work alongside us. The student’s placements at Great Glens are giving them hands-on experience working with service users living with a range of mental health challenges, from anxiety and depression to more complex long-term conditions like schizophrenia.
Not only is the student’s work benefitting their studies, but they are a great asset to the work already taking place at Great Glens. They bring up-to-date knowledge and research accessed as part of their degrees, and are keen to implement this whilst gaining extra, practical experience within their placement.
The student nurses are placed within several areas at Great Glens. This includes residential social care environments, multi disciplinary teams, therapeutic activities and community integration. The students work alongside our staff, collaborate, offer suggestions and share insights throughout their time with us.
The feedback gathered from the manager at Great Glens expresses the “positive experience” that having the student nurses has been; “it’s been nice to have younger people come in, especially when they are positive and as keen to learn as the ones here are. It has been also been good to discuss the values of our profession with people who are just entering the field.” Whilst the placement affords the students the benefits of hands-on experience, the staff have expressed the benefits of working with with fresh faces; “explaining what we do, and why we do it has been such a learning experience, and I think has made us more reflective when it comes to executing our work.”
The feedback gathered from the students has been paramount to understanding their experience of working at Great Glens. Though a wealth of learning is established during their time studying, it is only through practical application that students are able to understand the realities of working in mental health care, with one student noting that it is “useful to have a placement to get hands-on experience.” This same student mentioned that although the classroom is great to get the basics down, placements like this “help to put the fundamentals of nursing into practice…good to get hands-on experience to apply knowledge to those who will actually be affected by it.”
Work placements like these are one of many ways in mental health nurses learn and are shaped into confident, compassionate, and capable people who are able to make a real positive difference to people’s lives.
Image courtesy of The University of Northampton.