Faculty offers Innovative Solution to Help Government Achieve Health Visitor Target
With the government announcing its commitment to recruiting 4,200 additional health visitors by 2015 and subsequent NHS North West Strategic Health Authority (SHA) commissions for new health visitors, the Faculty has developed a unique new training option that will help play a part in achieving this challenging aim.
The announcement to recruit more health visitors was made by Minister for Public Health, Anne Milton, at a nursing conference early in 2011, where the Minister stated: ‘‘Developing the health visitor workforce is critical to rejuvenating the service so it offers a rapid response for urgent issues, access to child rearing expertise and the resource to deliver ongoing support. That’s why we’re making the money available to recruit 4,200 health visitors and improve the training they get.”
As part of this national drive, the Faculty was commissioned to recruit 18 new health visitors and responded by developing a two year MSc with Nursing Registration programme, followed by the one year PGDip Specialist Community Public Health Nursing course, to offer an accessible option to those postgraduates interested in the profession and to offer an innovative training solution to help meet the increasing demand for health visitors in the years ahead. This challenging programme, the first of its kind in the region, offers a unique opportunity to postgraduates with a commitment to a career in nursing and health visiting.
The postgraduate nursing qualification is one route of a wider nursing programme which includes an undergraduate BSc route. The programme received substantial praise from the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) and was commended on the organisation of placement activities and partnership across the North West region, student support by practice learning support systems, excellent systems for equality and diversity and service user, carer and student involvement in informing the curriculum. The NMC were also pleased to see the successful production of a joint practice document, produced in partnership with other Higher Education Institutions in the region.
To find out more about this programme or any of our courses visit www.ljmu.ac.uk/health or contact the Faculty Admissions team on 0151 231 5829.
Content owner: Katherine Geer
