How do student adult nurses perceive an undergraduate degree programme to prepare them for working in a community nursing role?

There has been an increase in health policy focusing on the delivery of health care in a community setting across the United Kingdom in recent years (Department of Health 1999). Scottish health policy seeks to provide escalating levels of care in the community by delivering care closer to the homes of individuals and thus increasing access to healthcare and reducing health inequalities (The Scottish Government 2007). This shift in care location away from the traditional secondary care setting will mean that the community nursing workforce will be required to evolve and expand. Although there is a surfeit of literature pertaining to the level of preparedness of newly registered nurses to undertake staff nurse roles, these mostly focus on secondary care settings (Ali, Watson and Albutt, 2011, Baglin and Rugg 2010, Clark and Holmes 2007).There is a paucity in the literature relating to preparing student nurses to undertake community nursing roles specifically. This extensive research proposal sets out the project planning process of a study to explore how student nurses on an adult nursing programme, perceive their preparedness to undertake community nursing roles at the point of registration. The qualitative exploratory research study will be conducted at a Scottish University where participants will be selected using purposive sampling. The degree programme has recently been validated by the Nursing and Midwifery Council and is currently being undertaken by the first cohorts of students. Data will be collected using semi-structured interviews and a focus group. The data will be analysed using thematic analysis. Braun and Clarke (2006) have developed a fifteen point checklist of criteria which will be employed in this study for high quality analysis to guide the process of generating initial codes and searching, reviewing and defining themes and finally producing a report. Identified themes will be examined in the context of the research. Findings will be used to provide a benchmark against which the success of the programme can be measured.msc_priunpub1419_ethesesunpu