ORCID

Abstract

Approaches to nurse education vary internationally. Our approach in the United Kingdom (UK), together with countries including Germany, Italy, and Republic of Ireland is unusual, where field-specific undergraduate nurse education programmes are standard. This approach allows nurses to register as children’s nurses without undertaking generalist training beforehand. Recently, arguments have been made for a move back towards generalist nurse education (Purssell and Sagoo, 2023). This has been met with passionate refutation from children’s (Fallon, 2023), learning disability (Cogher, 2023), and mental health (Warrender, 2022) nursing colleagues.Internationally, generalist nurse education is standard (van Kraaij et al., 2023). In most countries, nurses wishing to specialise in the care of babies, children or young people, or other specialities undertake post-registration, postgraduate training (Clarke, 2017). Arguments for generalised education surround the universality of this approach, where all nurses are trained to meet the needs of people across a lifespan. Purssell and Sagoo (2023) suggest that removing general elements of nurse education in the United Kingdom has resulted in an inflexible British nursing workforce.

DOI

10.1177/13674935241231112

Publication Date

2024-01-30

Publication Title

Journal of Child Health Care

Volume

28

Issue

1

ISSN

1367-4935

First Page

3

Last Page

7

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