A Nurse Education Workforce Fit for Purpose?

In the United Kingdom nurse educators involved in the preparation of undergraduate pre-registration students should hold a professional qualification equivalent in level to that being studied and a teaching qualification. The Nurse Midwifery Council (NMC) recognises that students may well benefit from exposure to faculty who hold qualifications beyond that of their students yet make no recommendations, rightly, concerning the subjects or disciplines that should be studied. Vacancies, when advertised, indicate a teaching qualification as an essential requirement whereas doctoral education is more commonly desirable. Pursuit of a teaching qualification, in order to secure a post, may well foster greater interest in the practice of learning and teaching over that of nursing itself. In most disciplines in higher education qualifications and publications are acquired in the discipline taught; based on the premise that students benefit from exposure to academic staff immersed in their discipline. The precedence of a teaching qualification over postgraduate research may well be one of the factors that historically has limited the development of the evidence base of the discipline. This paper will examine the complexities associated with faculty preparation and the relationship, if any, to the preparedness of students for practice.