Great placements available for nursing students in Wales

“I feel inspired to be the best nurse I can be. Nursing has shown me what empathy is all about.” (Jane: A current nursing student - 2024)

Jane’s comment sums up her passion for nursing and is widely shared by students undertaking nursing programmes in Wales. Getting into nursing is not only about learning how to perform technical skills, but also about growing your professional expertise about how to support others.

Becoming a nurse means knowing how to prioritise people, preserve safety, practice effectively and promote professionalism and trust. Nursing is about delivering person-centred, compassionate care, leading change and innovation as well as for example, knowing how to take someone’s blood pressure or insert a cannula.

Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) is the commissioner of all healthcare programmes in Wales and has awarded education contracts to all education providers of healthcare programmes.

All Welsh universities who offer nursing programmes need to ensure they are meeting high quality standards set out in HEIW education contracts and by the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

There are four fields of nursing: Adult Nursing; Mental Health Nursing; Child Nursing and Learning Disability Nursing.

Nursing programmes involve 2,300 hours of academic-based learning and 2,300 hours of placement activity. There are various routes and lengths of nursing programmes, but if you enter a 3-year nursing programme you can expect to have around 9 placements overall, three in each year.

As an example, this is Tahir’s placement journey to registration as an Adult Nursing student:

Year 1: Community Hospital - Renal Ward – Minor Injuries Unit.

Year 2: District Nursing Team - Acute Medical Admissions Unit – Hospital Ward caring for older people.

Year 3: Emergency Department – Surgical Theatres – Medical Ward

Within each of these placements Tahir also had some additional short ‘spoke’ placements, such as working in a team supporting homeless people, a community service supporting people with learning disabilities, time with research nurses, with voluntary support groups, and many more.

All students are supported throughout all of their placements. Practice supervisors and assessors of nursing students are required to meet Standards for student supervision and assessment set by the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

There is a clear commitment to provide high quality student placement learning experiences that meet important pledges agreed by all placement providers across Wales.

See some of the Word Cloud comments students have recorded about their placements as part of our HEIW digital postcard initiative.

Nursing is a wonderful career. There is an opportunity to gain a professional registration and a degree at the same time that sets you up for an exciting, challenging, and rewarding life adventure with incredible personal and professional opportunities.