What is a Nursing Associate ?

Well if this is a question you’ve thought about or asked, this piece of work will help you to understand.

We are a new role developed across England to fill the gap in services. The role has been made due to evidence showing that care could be better if we had this type of training route and skill mix amoung staff. The shape of caring review (2015) explains this in a more detailed and factual way.

I talk from my own experience and knowledge as a nursing associate(NA). I was one of the first trainee nursing associates (TNAs) across England starting in 2017. We gained our foundation degrees around January 2019. In training we were placed in different areas that ensured we had exposure to children, adults, mental health and learning disabilities nursing. We were also educated in university ensuring we knew how to care for these groups of patients using the most current and evidence based practice in line with our local policy.

The Nursing Associate role is not specific to one area of the populations people and should when qualified be confident to work with all types of people. This would obviously be dependant on the training and amount of support provided when entering a new area of work. A general knowledge on approaches, risk factors and knowing how to adapt to the specific group of patients should generally be embedded as individually and person centred care has in our academic and practice work.

We are trained to a level 5 criteria when qualified this is a level below a nurse, nurses exit study with a level 6 meaning they complete 1 more year of training. The training provided to nursing associates is very hands on learning

We are employed by the trust meaning our skills previously if gained in the same trust are kept. This is taking into consideration patient group. These skills such as blood glucose monitoring and venepuncture skills, are valued in nursing care and can be undertaken provided we are competent and have evidence of training. We are able to do these skills without supervision, freeing up registered nurses time. We are employees of trust’s meaning we have access to systems like patient track, ICE and other online documentation systems.

As we were able to transfer skills, this allowed me to basically try to learn more advance skills that me and the people in the community I was working in befitted from. I found the course very interesting academically. Our first year i felt i was learning how to understand research, and learning about reliable statistics, quality of studies, best practice, holistic care, determinants of health, social impact, physical impact, anatomy and physiology the list goes on. I felt empowered in my role I gained the ability to speak and be heard. The impact I have on a patients wellbeing was at first a daunting feeling, but I was never forced into tasks I hadn’t been physically trained to do and felt competent completing. Now I use my ability to improve patient care in my area of work.

Each and every placement or spoke I attended I met masters of the trade each with there own story and knowledge to pass on. I had experience working in surgical, medical environments, community services and a specialist medicine.

My speciality was Renal inpatients, linked to a dialysis unit. The idea now is to have experience in hospital , close to home and at the homes of our patients. Having experience in all areas is essential for wealth of knowledge. This helps to understand services and know what’s available, allowing referrals to be made appropriately when qualified.

I am now able to take my own group of patients seeing people through admission to discharge, making appropriate referrals and involving any professionals I feel could be beneficial to the patient. I usually take a smaller amount of patients then Registered Nurses (RNs) or complexity is taken into consideration and patient groups and split fairly. I am usually being lead by a band 6 sister or charge nurse.

I’m capable of administering medication I have been assessed and deemed competent to do, this was assessed via route, IV is not amoung the routes we are able to administer but this is trust dependent as the NMC state we are able to further our skills with extra study and I know of some NAs are undertaking the IV course. I am unsure if this will be a skill I will gain in the future.

I can second check some IVs and CD from the cupboard. I’m able to administer those not kept within the cupboard. I am unable to administer the high risk medication groups with in my local trust. I personally tend to see oral, topical, inhaled, subcutaneous and occasionally IM in my area of work. When I am administering I am using the 5 Rs and my knowledge around medication if I am ever unsure I ask a more experienced member of staff for help.

We can progress to the role of RNs but we are also a stand alone role in our own right with a PIN like nurses and other professionals. Progression at this point would mean a self funded 18 month course. I hope that in the future we can do this as employees and not have to leave the trust, as for many people this is a big step to leave employment and become a student especially those who have families, bills and are dependent on there income.

Forgive any grammer or/and spelling mistakes. I plan on starting a blog talking about my experience through training and what I felt my challenges were. I also want to talk about how I have embraced becoming a registrant and how my trust have supported me and helped to embed the role. So if your interested follow my page on twitter @kerrycrookston4 and thank you for taking the time to read my vision of the new role.