All this talk about whether nursing is or isn’t a “proper” subject to study at university (compared to more establised subjects like psychology) was originally sparked off by my reading In the Margin’s of My Mind’s post about the attitudes of his/her careers teachers. Apparently they still think going off to study nursing is a “waste” of a talented, intelligent student compared to doing psychology, history, law etc.
But should they think like that? I’ve been scanning a few numbers, courtesy of the Complete University Guide. Some of the statistics might be surprising.
There’s two sets of statistics that interested me. The first is What do graduates earn? What pay cheque can they expect in their first job? The second is entitled What do graduates do? Do they go into a high-flying graduate job? Or on to post-graduate study? Or stacking shelves in Tescos?
So let’s start with the table on earnings.
There’s two columns on the table. One for graduates who go into a graduate job, and one for those who go into a non-graduate job. Nursing ranks surprisingly high on the list, with a graduate starting salary of £20,764. I’m guessing that his means they regard a staff nurse post as a graduate job, even though you can get into it with just a diploma. That figure looks to me like the band 5 starting salary with the average bumped up slightly due to those private companies who pay nurses more than the NHS.
Psychology, on the other hand, is way, way down the list, with a graduate starting salary of £17,374. If they go into a non-graduate job, then that drops even further down to an average of £13,591, less than three grand a year higher than the minimum wage.
Interestingly, if a newly-qualified nurse decides to ditch nursing and go for a non-graduate job, it seems they can expect average earnings of £17,203, only £171 a year less than the psychologist in a graduate post. I’ve no idea where those nurses are going. Possibly sucking at the tit as drug reps?
Nursing also ranks higher than business studies, politics, materials technology, pharmacology, and…interestingly enough for Dr Crippen and co…higher than law.
Obviously that’s slightly unfair, since this table is only going on starting salaries. A trainee lawyer might start on a low salary but be compensated by high earnings later in their career. We’ll come back to that point though.
And so it goes on down the list of graduate earnings, before we finally discover that a degree in Celtic Studies really is a waste of everybody’s time. Financially speaking anyway.
Now let’s move onto the second table, looking at where the graduates go.
Nursing rates fourth-highest on the list for going straight into a graduate job, with 86%, behind medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine. There’s also 7% of nurses who are not only in a graduate post, but also doing further study – clearly they’re getting in early to move to that quacktitioner post. So that’s 93% of newly-qualified nurses going straight into graduate-level employment.
By contrast, only 34% of psychology graduates are in graduate jobs. There’s also a further 22% who are doing postgraduate study, but that still leaves a whopping 38% who are neither in a graduate job or in postgrad study. They’re working as baristas in Starbucks, customer service advisors in call centres, checkout assistants in Tesco. That’s an absolutely huge wastage rate.
That’s one thing we have as nurses that means I don’t think we need to feel so inferior to “proper” university graduates. We get job security. A degree in law or psychology might turn someone into a lawyer or a psychologist with all the high earnings ceiling that comes with it – but only if you get a 2:1 minimum, do further postgrad training and beat off all the other thousands of applicants. For those that don’t get that far – well, there’s always that job in Starbucks. A nursing degree or diploma, on the other hand, will turn somebody into a nurse.
So, I think we could do with raising our own self-esteem as a profession. That just-qualified Nursey, as he/she drives home from the new 20k job with all the generous NHS pension, annual leave and sick leave benefits, shouldn’t feel so inferior to the “proper” university graduates out there. If Nursey stops off at Starbucks on the way home, it may well be one of those graduates serving the coffee.
Interesting statistics. I think it’s a shame that comparisons have to be made in such a light. I don’t think any degree in itself is better or worse than any other (although the teaching standards might be different).
I don’t think a nursing graduate should feel inferior or need to justify their qualification to anyone. But there is this sense of needing to compare and classify people according to wage, social class and ‘difficulty’ of degree that means some people will always feel superior to others.. and just to place where I’m coming from – I got very good A levels – went to one of the nice traditional universities to study Philosophy – got a job as a care assistant in a residential home (philosophy is very worthy but it doesn’t pay the rent!) and ended up doing my MA in Social work in one of the ex-polys that would certainly attract a lot of scorn from people who want to display some intellectual snobbery but also earning a lot more as well as being eminently more employable as a result..
(Ok, I know it’s social work rather than nursing but I think an equal comparison could be made).
Indeed, cb.
Console yourself from the intellectual snobbery by considering that social workers came out 7th highest on the list for starting salaries.
“Nursing rates fourth-highest on the list for going straight into a graduate job,
By contrast, only 34% of psychology graduates are in graduate jobs”
99% of nurses go into err nursing which never used to be a graduate profession until it was decided by whoever decides these things that you now need a degree to be a nurse. And what is a graduate profession anyway? Many jobs never needed a degree but now that practically every one has one in every thing from arc welding to cake making you now need a degree to dig holes in the road I shouldn’t wonder.
Psychology graduates going into clinical psychology can still expect to be earning considerably more than their nursing counterparts a few years after qualifying.
Nursing in America has been a degree profession since the 40s.
But only if they get a clinical psychology job. And a hell of a lot simply don’t.
I’d say that a job which requires you go to university first and pays a 20k starting salary has a reasonable case for calling itself a graduate job. The Complete University Guide certainly seemed to think so.
But tell you what, just for you and to make you happy, I’ll go out and find myself a psychology graduate and tell him, “I bow in subservience to your university degree, which is a proper subject not like mine. Big Mac and fries please.”
LOL Z
I have another question on the psychology vs. nursing subject, and I’m going to post it here because the other two posts on the subject are getting a little scary on the comment front:
Do any of you think that having a BSc in psychology followed by a graduate MH nursing diploma would give you any benefit (in career, maturity, knowlege or anything else) over just a straight BN in MH nursing?
On the subject of psychology: an undergraduate psychology degree is not going to prepare you to go into any kind of clinical role. Most university psychology departments are concentrated on psychology as a theoretical discipline, with a strong emphasis on cognition and perception, rather than on abnormal psychology or therapuetic applictions.
A psych BA’s content reflects this. For example, here’s what first years study in the psychology BA in my alma mater:
– Practicals, methodology and statistics
– Introduction to psychology
– Social psychology
– Communication and language perception
– History of psychology
– psychometrics/qualitative methodology
– Psychological disorder
As you see, “psychological disorder” is in there at the bottom of the list as one subject among many.
In terms of what psychology departments do research in, I know a number of psychology researchers in various universities I have studied and worked at and _all_ of them are interested in cognitive and linguistic psychology, with some leaning to neuroscience as well. I only know one researcher who has an interest in studying the abnormal brain and he is in the USA these days.
An undergraduate degree in psychology is exactly that: a basic grounding in the different streams of research and interest in the subject of which abnormal psych is just one. It’s not going to prepare you to work as a clinical psychologist any more than a degree in English literature makes you an expert on 10th centry Norse mythological verse, although Beowulf is taught on all English litt syllabii. That’s what postgraduate study is for.
Therefore the vast majority of psychology graduates are not going to seek clinical work, as that’s not their interest. Some work in HR. Others decide to do MAs in computer science and come work in IT. Still others get jobs as claims adjusters with a car insurance firm, do teacher training, become estate agents, etc – just like graduates of French, History, Geography, Biology…
I thought I’d point this out because I have a different perspective of what psychology students do given that I used to work in a research lab that was jointly run by comp sci and psychology – you guys may see all the clinical psychs but they are really, really in the minority compared to all the other psych grads out there, or even the researchers – so you need to separate out the data to split the clinical psych folks out from all the other grads.
In-the-margins: my advice to you regarding psych degrees would be: psych departments are jam-packed with incredibly bright students, mostly female, who think it’s all very interesting and that they will get to help people. Make sure you really know what the course content is and that eye-tracking experiments interest you, as the competition for good grades will be very stiff, much stiffer than in many of the other subjects. When you graduate, you will be, “just another girl with a humanities degree” so make sure this is what you want. I’ve never understood why this subject, plus English litt, are so much more popular than the other humanities subjects. Baffling.
In general I`m in agreement with E but I differ in that I think I would employ a qualified nurse over a psychology graduate.
Mocking psychology graduates is another matter. Lots of stats are being bandied round. I don`t believe any of them. When I worked in a MSU I worked with a lovely girl banking as a NA. She told me that there were 400 in her cohort studying psychology at the local university. She realised she would have to work her butt off to stand out and get anywhere. She duly got her first class honours degree, one of only seven who did. She didn`t get a sniff at any of the jobs she wanted.
These kids are being betrayed. A lot of them are ending up in McDonalds. The good thing about being in the army is they send you lots of places where you can`t spend your money. I have no debt whatsoever. I feel like weeping when some of my junior colleagues tell me how much they owe. And for what ?
DDR – strictly speaking I won’t be *just another girl with a humanities degree*, I’ll be just another girl with a degree that will give me Graduate Basis for Registration and so will be able to train clinically in psychology which I wouldn’t be able to do with any other degree.
Anyway! My optimistic streak tells me that by the time I graduate, IAPT will have made it much easier for me to get a job! (or not)
(On another note, I think the thing that scares me the most about nursing is that I actually would be qualified four years from now. I’m actually more comfortable with the idea of a 3 year BSc, maybe a MSc, and then a doctorate. Massive debt or not, it’s actually less terrifying!)
Sorry I didn’t mean to sound like that: I met lots of students in uni who studied psych because they thought it sounded interesting, discovered it wasn’t what they thought it was, had no interest in clinical work… and they ended up as “just another girl with a humanities degree”, whereas they might have done better in another subject, with less fierce competition.
You do appear to know what you’re doing. Just watch your non-psychology friends suddenly absent themselves when you announce you need volunteers for an eye-tracking experiment
.
in-the-margins:
If you do the psych degree, be prepared for an awful lot of research methods and statistical analysis. In my whole degree, I only did one module on ‘abnormal psychology’…
I found the psych very objective; we were studying people as opposed to interacting with them for the most part. You are distanced from them. In mental health, it is a lot more up close and personal…you can’t be objective, you need to be able to be warm and empathic. I’m not saying there aren’t any warm, empathic psychologists out there, but at the end of the day, psychology prides itself on being a science, with all that that entails.
That may not make sense; I have been poorly-sick today after a nasty night shift, so sorry if it’s gibberish…
How does nursing rank higher than pharmacology for a starting salary? Nurses start on band 5. Pharmacists, phsyios, OT’s all start on band 6
Nurses is a great starting salary, but as has been mentioned, if you want to stay at the patients bedside its a figure that doesn’t change much. . . if you’re in it for the money go be a ‘manager’ aka modern matrons — spend all your time stuck in meetings or at a computer. Then again, if you’re in it for the money, you’re probably in the wrong career xXx
What about the opinion that MH nurses require some “life experience” and aren’t always suitably equiped for it straight from school?
Studying psychology would at least pass the time!!
Hi, in-the-margins
DeeDee and cellar_door have better knowledge of the course content of psychology degrees than me, so I won’t add a great deal to what they’ve already said.
But if the objective is to try and get as much clinical knowledge as possible before qualifying, it might be better to just do nursing and go down the honours degree route.
If you’re feeling uncertain about whether it’s what you want, then it might be worthwhile simply taking a year or two out from study. That would give you a chance to get some relevant work experience (say, as a nursing assistant or a support worker) and also give you some time and space to reflect on things. You don’t have to rush into it.
Like Z said, no rush…my advice if you are really stuck would be to try and get a NA job somewhere that has psychologists attached, and see if they will let you spend some time with them on your days off. Will delay the responsibility somewhat as well :0)
I would rather you took your head out of your arse Z and dealt with that huge degree shaped chip on your shoulder.
In-the margins if I can wade in here with my two-penny worth. If you want to be a nurse be a nurse if you want to be a clinical psychologist then do a psychology degree. But bear in mind that if you do a degree in nursing you will probably learn precious little psychology (I didn’t) unless you go to one of Z’s prestigious Russell group of Universities and maybe even not then. If you want to both degrees then you won’t get funding for the second (even if you do a nursing diploma as they have changed the rules since my day) If you are unsure, my advice do the psychology degree it is a more versatile qualification which is more likely (despite what Z says) to get you a job in another profession (teaching, social work) than a degree in nursing is.
And don’t be afraid to have your say in any of the comments threads it might get a little heated occasionally but we are all friends really.
“Therefore the vast majority of psychology graduates are not going to seek clinical work, as that’s not their interest. Some work in HR. Others decide to do MAs in computer science and come work in IT. Still others get jobs as claims adjusters with a car insurance firm, do teacher training, become estate agents, etc “
In other words on the whole they get well paid professional jobs, thank you DeeDee
E – resorting to ad hom when you can’t answer Z’s points? bad form, old chap. So what if most nursing students go into nursing – that’s kind of what they signed up for, you know?
I’m going to ignore E’s last comment, since he’s starting to gibber a bit.
Basically, whether one does nursing or psychology involves a bit of a trade-off of choices and risks.
If you do mental health nursing, you get a near-guaranteed job at the end of it with a relatively high starting salary but only a moderate earnings ceiling. You won’t learn a huge amount of “pure” psychology, though you will do a fair amount of psychopathology – both in theory in the lecture room and in practice on the ward. And you’ll also learn a certain amount about the different forms of psychotherapies – person-centred counselling, CBT, motivational interviewing etc.
If you do psychology, there’s a higher earnings ceiling if you get on the ladder as a psychologist, but getting onto that ladder initially will be difficult, and some don’t succeed in getting on it at all.
Either way, the choice is yours. If you’re unsure about what to do, taking a year out before uni might be worth considering in order to explore your options.
E> “In other words on the whole they get well paid professional jobs, thank you DeeDee”
Yes: the vast majority of psychology graduates are not studying the subject because they want to become a practicing clinical psychologist, or at least, they lose that idea pretty quickly. A small number want to do research, but most have picked the subject because they want a degree and this subject interests them, same as French, German, History, Geography, Chemistry, Anglo-Saxon Norse and Celtic Studies etc etc.
The vast majority of graduates don’t use the material they studied at all in their choice of profession. The skills you learn with a decent degree are what the employers are after, not what you learned about the Magna Carta or the Plantagenets. Even in IT, I’ve had employers far more interested in my maths skills than whether or not I had swallowed a C++ user manual. I don’t want to get into the argument as to whether or not said skills are worth anything BTW as that’s a whole other ballgame.
(I’ll let you in on a secret, my particular comp sci course was heavily slanted towards cognitive psychology and computer modelling of same. None of us had the remotest interest in abnormal psych and we didn’t get any courses on it either).
It’s true that there are a lot of non-vocational graduate jobs out there, and that anyone with any degree can apply for them. Unfortunately the competition for them is pretty fierce, and not every graduate gets them. Hence why we get so many graduates working in non-graduate jobs.
After I did my previous BA(hons) and MA I applied for quite a few of those jobs, but I never got anywhere with any of them.
As DeeDee says:
The vast majority of graduates don’t use the material they studied at all in their choice of profession. The skills you learn with a decent degree are what the employers are after, not what you learned about the Magna Carta or the Plantagenets.
I think is just as true of a good nursing degree as it would be of any other subject – probably more so, since you get some practical skills thrown in too. It’s not a theory of mine that gets tested though, because most nursing graduates become nurses, funnily enough.
I had lamb for dinner. Was very nice.
“If you do mental health nursing, you get a near-guaranteed job at the end of it”
Now I know you have taken leave of your senses Z or are you unaware of the latest round of redundancies in nursing. (Nurses’ leaders say patients are being harmed by job cuts in the profession caused by continuing NHS deficits, BBC news 15/04/07, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6552249.stm )
The student we have with us NOW is far from certain of getting a job when he qualifies in a few weeks time.
Beakie get your head out of your arse then run along and play outside will you.
Beakie, You squeal like a stuck pig when I box your ears but you`re quite happy to play tag team with Z against E. Says something about you. Not sure what.
These arguments are getting a bit ridiculous. Beakie and Z are both very much OF the university system despite Z having, belatedly, emerged from it. They`re highly unlikely to be critical of it and I suppose that`s understandable. Beakie has bills to pay and wants to keep his job. Z thinks his academic record entitles him to career progression, I hope he has the leadership skills.
What`s annoying though is the ease with which they fall prey to the modern disease of endlessly picking over the secondary, peripheral issues whilst studiously ignoring the main ones ( as you did with the freedom of speech debate ).
Who cares how people perceive a nursing degree in comparison to a psychology degree. I want the following answered:
Most nurses aren`t degree quality. Most students, when I trained, were cheating their way to Diploma level. Why are we persisting with trying to make nursing a degree entry job?
More generally, any old lightweight is allowed into university these days. Why ?
Why are we permitting, and encouraging, our young people to accumulate such horrendous levels of debt?
Please apply yourself to the second two Beakie. It took you a hell of a long time to even acknowledge that, as a tutor, you had problems with plagiarism and the like ( incidentally you`re talking shite, if plagiarism was that easy to deal with it would have been done by now, it`s been identified as a problem for ages ). Even worse, you`ve made no mention of student debt. Perhaps you don`t like to dwell on the financial mess your beloved system leaves people in.
Q: “Why are we persisting with trying to make nursing a degree entry job?”
A: Because idiots like Beakie are in charge of nurse training.
Beakie may have naively swallowed the staff room sales patter but I really don`t think he`s responsible for the state of nurse training.
I’m not “in charge” of nurse training, E – that would be the government and the NMC. Complain to them and leave me alone.
OSB – nursing should be a degree entry profession for the simple reason that it will then have parity with other healthcare professions such as radiography and occupational therapy. Without parity in terms of education and qualification, it would be very difficult to argue that an OT and a staff nurse should be on a similar band on the pay spine. As for student nurse debt, twas ever thus in nursing – the bursary is actually much better than the salary I was paid when I did my training and was classed as an NHS employee.
Why is any old lightweight allowed into university? Well, again, if we’re talking about nursing, I don’t believe this to be the case any more than any old lightweight could take up nurse training back in the stone age when OSB trained. Candidates for our nursing courses have to undergo a literacy and numeracy test, a group discussion and an individual interview. Were they to apply for – say – engineering, having the right qualifications would be sufficient to get them on the course.
But perhaps OSB is thinking of the numbers involved. Well, for that you have your Trusts to thank. They have contracts with the HEIs, and we are commissioned by them to recruit x number of students, to meet workforce projections. It really has very little to do with us, we are just tiny little pawns in the great big NHS game. Trusts can cut their commissions at the drop of a hat, with absolutely no comeback whatsoever, which leads to redundancies among our staff. Yes, my job security relies on people who I don’t know and have no influence over. So really, defending nurse education isn’t helping me keep my job.
So why do I do it? Because we’re an easy target for ill-informed ranting. OSB, you may not be aware that some antediluvian version of you was banging on in exactly the same way 30 years ago, but there’s evidence from the Journal of Advanced Nursing that the ‘theory-practice gap’ and the poor level of skills of student nurses were issues in the 70s, long before nursing became a degree or even a diploma discipline. This was apparently the golden age, if the terminally nostalgic are to be believed. Attrition was also a problem, with about 30% attrition expected and accepted from nursing courses.
But I also do it because people like E, who wave crap nurses through their placement assessments, think they have nothing to do with the crap staff nurses they end up becoming. If I were more psychologically minded, I might call the constant, tedious, predictable attacks on nurse education a displacement activity. But perhaps I’d be incorrect in doing so.
As for wider student debt – what are you going to do? Tell people NOT to go to university if they want to? Actively discourage them from doing what they want to do? Good luck with that.
@E
“If you do mental health nursing, you get a near-guaranteed job at the end of it”
Now I know you have taken leave of your senses Z or are you unaware of the latest round of redundancies in nursing. (Nurses’ leaders say patients are being harmed by job cuts in the profession caused by continuing NHS deficits, BBC news 15/04/07, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6552249.stm )
E, that news report is a year and a half old. What do you mean, “latest”?
Anyway,5 months after that news report was filed, every single student in my mental health class walked into a staff nurse post. Every single one.
ONE of those in charge of nurse training you doughnut.
“If I were more psychologically minded, I might call the constant, tedious, predictable attacks on nurse education a displacement activity”
Well they do say the truth hurts Beakie.
“there’s evidence from the Journal of Advanced Nursing that the ‘theory-practice gap’ and the poor level of skills of student nurses were issues in the 70s, long before nursing became a degree or even a diploma discipline.”
Mwahahahahahahahah. Oh well that’s all right then as long as there is “evidence” that’s all. As long as the Advanced Journal of nursing bollocks says that the “theory-practice gap is down to poor “skills” because nurses aren’t getting enough edukashun then that must be right. Beakie the only “gap” is the conspicuous one between the ears of people who write learned articles for the advanced journal of nursing wibble. The same people who are in charge (in the sense of responsible for) nurse training today, the same people that say that you need to be educated to degree level in order to be a nurse at all. People like you infact.
I have just been speaking to the student we have in the department at the moment. He is a diploma student and is studying at the same university where I studied for my diploma. Although not confident of finding work near to where he lives he is reasonably confident of finding work somewhere but may have to travel to find it. He reports being very happy with his course and feels that he has been prepared very well for starting work as a staff nurse. I am not his assessor but he has accompanied me into a number of assessments and he appears to be a bright and capable student. He was not sure what the educational standard of his counterparts was but out of an initial cohort of 25 the course is down to just 12 with a reduction of about a third in learning disability nursing and a similar figure in adult nursing. Our student reported that the main reason for people leaving was that they felt unable to meet the academic standard required. Our student also reported that in his opinion a number of students were recruited to the course by the university knowing that they were not up to the standard required in order to get the funding. According to our student the university was allowed to keep the money after the student left the course.
Our student although happy with his course was scathing about the course at the other university in our area saying that they never fail anyone. Other students that have passed through the A&E dept recently (general and mental health) have been less satisfied with their training and have tended to agree with my assessment of their training.
Z you are really getting desperate now aren’t you 18 months is not that long ago and the job losses announced then are beginning to work through now. I have been applying for jobs recently and a number of posts here and elsewhere have been frozen while they attempt to place nurses who have lost their jobs elsewhere. And do really imagine that things are going to improve in the weeks, months or even years ahead? Do the words “credit crunch” mean anything to you. Tried to sell a house recently? Noticed the direction in which interest rates are going? Get real Z the economy is fucked and the health funding taps are due to be turned off very soon now.
I know little or nothing about nursing in the 70`s.
“To achieve parity” is not a good enough argument. Why isn`t infantry soldiering a degree entry profession. Tactics can be hugely complicated, you have very complex and expensive gear to play with, you need diplomacy and language skills, you need awareness of greater strategic and political objectives, communication, leadership and “reflection” are hugely important and oh yeah, you`d get parity with the Royal Engineers. Don`t get me going about O.T`s, if that`s a degree level profession I`ll eat my shoes.
Your waffle about Harvard and old fashioned cheating are nonsense too. My clever peers from school, who went to uni, may have tossed it off, got wasted, slept 23 hours a day, got up for Countdown and cheated their way through. I don`t know. But they could have made a good fist of it if they tried. My colleagues in nursing aren`t, generally, of that calibre despite your demanding “group discussions”
There will be plenty of students, and some damn good ones, round here not getting staff nurse posts. Some from last year aren`t in post yet. Next years will be struggling big time.
You know what E, you’ve been and gone and convinced me.
The smartest nursing student is clearly way stupider than the dumbest psychology student. All psychology graduates went to top notch universities, including the ones who actually went to rubbish ones, and every single one of them gets a solid gold toilet when they graduate. When I started nurse training I had to have a lobotomy because otherwise I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to do the course.
I would say more, but because I’m a thicko nurse I’m not sure what this here keyboard thing is actually for. I tried chewing it, but that didn’t seem to achieve anything.
That’s an interesting comment there shrink.
Z> You need to talk into the mouse instead of wasting time with the keyboard. Haven’t you seen Star Trek 4?
I want to point out that the comments I’ve made about psychology courses is not any kind of remark about nursing courses, as I know sod-all about the latter. I thought I’d toss in some info on what psych students generally study but wasn’t making any other comment.
You folks on here anyway seem to care a lot more about your work and how you do it than a lot of IT engineers I have met, if that means anything.
“To achieve parity” is not a good enough argument.
Of course it isn’t.
Your waffle about Harvard and old fashioned cheating are nonsense too.
Yes, of course it is.
Whatever you say about anything OSB is absolutely right, no matter how little you’ve read on or understand of the subject.
Satisfied now?
ONE of those in charge of nurse training you doughnut.
Nope not even one of those in charge. I am told what to do by the government and the NMC. I know this because I’m, you know, employed in the field. Stop telling me what I am and am not, doughnut.
As for the rest of your drivel – really really second rate stuff now. You should take lessons from OSB – he REALLY knows how to troll.
beakie is not wrong in his history of nurse training – theory/practice has been an issue for decades. It was present in my hospital based training and was promoted by out of touch, under motivated and cynical practice staff – not out of touch tutors.
There wasn’t a lot of teaching on how to introduce evidence-based nursing to the wards as EBN wasn’t much of a thing back then.
Since Uni training took over – EBN has also changed but it seems to be to still be going through it’s own validation process. Nurses are yet to fully grasp it in a meaningful way and, as on the other post, it still produces excessive ‘wibble’ – but at least it’s producing now. (Why is ‘wibble’ not a recognised word in this site..hmm?)
Psychology is purely research and science based. In this regard it is ahead of nursing – but lacks any practical application in the clinical field. Guess that’s why they have the post-grad clinical stuff.
Nurse training has developed into a degree entry profession and personally, rightly so. Nursing is becoming a more theoretically-based practice that requires more technical understanding – more so in MH I believe – if we are to tackle issues of prevention and provide innovative ways to deliver services. Nursing, much to the disappointment of some health care professionals is bringing it’s weight of knowledge in line with it’s weight of numbers. No longer does it ‘bully’ it’s philosophy into health care – but brings it alongside (and sometimes ahead of) other professions in grounded ways.
Modern student nurses still worry me mostly because I don’t relate to their training in the way I did mine. My mentors understood what it was I was meant to be doing and it was more monkey-see monkey-do work then than now. I still don’t rate newly qualified nurses as being competent to the same practical levels of old style trained nurses – but then standards have changed too and no longer should it be seen that a new qualified starts on day #1 holding the keys and managing a unit – which disagrees with Z’s contention that a new grad nurse can manage a unit one graduation – they can’t, it’s way too complex to learn in 3 years eclectic MH training.
P-G psychology vs nursing – I searched this site for the respective jobs:
http://www.gradcareers.com.au/.....ers_search
It returned 20 for psychology and 10 for nursing.
(Including a job in Aldi’s for both professions)
Of course, there are a heap more jobs in health care for RN’s than there are for Psych grads but, as I said before, the Layard project is likely to bring about a shift in nursing jobs to psychologists – if they can increase the clinical psych placements available.
Z: I think you’re neither right nor wrong (OSB will be so proud of my fence sitting again) – I think you perhaps exemplify the higher end new breed nurse that it is hoped the degree training encourages and as such would, at least, be on a parity with psychology in the open market – and at an advantage in the clinical one – but it is still turning out thick as shit ones who should not progress beyond bed-panning. Not sure on how bad the worst in psychology are – I’ll nip to Macca’s and ask, eh?
However, with RN upper eduational levels rising – this leaves a gap in the nursing team (where the old EN used to sit) that needs to be filled. AIN training is not yet up to speed to fill that gap – tho is improving (how is the NVQ going nowadays?). Once it is – then we can raise the bar and start to happily kick out the crap ones – and give them an honorary NVQ or something (bit like the old ENs or the USA LPN system)
Once we upskill the eyes, ears and hands of the shop floor to backfill the RN roles that are no longer RN duties – then we need to replace the old RNs with untrained support workers – most likely from volunteer organisations – or non-clinical workers such as expanding the Ward Cleaners role to Operational Support Worker – to make the beds, tea and toast etc.
Personally I think they should have left nurse training as it was – and invested in the higher education post-grad nursing that was directly linked to promootional opportunities and destroy the “dead men’s shoes” career pathway. Of course far less people would have taken up the post-grad once they got their RN – these would be the ones who are at the epicentre of the ‘failing to fail’ headaches.
I should read my own posts thru before posting…. love when I contradict myself but I don’t often do it in the same post…
Nurse training has developed into a degree entry profession and personally, rightly so.
Personally I think they should have left nurse training as it was
Before OSB has a stroke….
Nursing needs to have a degree level – level to be taken seriously – but the way they’ve done it has been mushed.
Most of the non-graduate jobs that psychology graduates take are not barista, postman, or shelf-stacker. Most of them are teaching assistant for child with autism, care assistant for elderly people with dementia, befriender, voluntary work with people with mental illness. It’s not just impossible to get on to a clinical psychology graduate training course without experience as, for example, an assistant psychologist – it’s impossible to get a job as an assistant psychologist without voluntary or low-pay-level (but obviously valuable) experience.
Dr Academic
(Lecturer in Psychology)
[...] at Mental Nurse debates the value of the value of nursing as a university discipline here and the discussion that follows is definitely worth a [...]