Uni screwed up nurses degree

[misty64]

My daughters university has miscalculated her placement hours from her nurses degree, she qualified in 2022and has been working as a nurse since then.
She is now expected to make these placement hours along side working full time, she works such long hours as it is and is always knackered and now has to make up a further 77 hours.
It is not just her it is everyone that has qualified that year and possibly previous years as well.
Am i wrong in thinking that they should just let this go and there is no point in doing these placement hours now.

Surely if they have worked more than 77 hours they should accept that? I'm with you and they should let this go. Can the student union or her union advise?

That seema absolutely insane to me! How stressful! Your poor daughter.

Are you 100% sure this applies to nurses who are employed? It might just apply for students who graduated but didn't go into the vocation but badly worded?

It's an NMC requirement that they have to work a certain amount of hours before they can qualify so it might be out of the unis hands. Even if we had a morning off we were expected to make these up.

It seems a bit ridiculous considering she has been working as a registered nurse for a while. Night be worth contacting the NMC?

Did no one on the course spot that they were 77 hours short!?!?!

The hours required are a regulation so I'm really surprised no one else picked up on this.

77 hours is a lot of on the job training hours so yes they will have to be completed. I would argue that they should still be treated as qualified though so paid as normal for their regular hours.

That is outrageous! What uni is that?

How bizarre-was that due to Covid?

Has she contacted her union? How many people on the course does this affect? Has she spoken to her current boss?

Yes, when the problem was discovered she had to fill in all her work details and it was her work who were informed of the decision , they have requested a meeting to see “how they can support her through this”.

At CCCU, the nursing students who graduated last year were 300 hours down. The situation was even worse for the student midwives, though…

Canterbury Christchurch in Medway

God that's terrible. I am so sorry 😞

I really hope your daughter is okay! Hopefully the "placement hours" can run concurrently with her normal shift pattern?

Well someone has messed up big time if everyone on the course has been affected, but when I qualified, I'm fairly sure we had to add our placement hours up and sign something to say it was at least 2300, so it's odd that no one noticed they were 77 hours down. I had to do an extra couple of weeks due to sickness.

It's an NMC requirement to do 2300 hours of placement though, so I'm guessing she will have to do it to tick the box.

Question is where is she going to do 77 hours of placement; there's hardly enough placement hours as it is.

If she had a supernumerary period for her first job, then she could ask if that could count?!

Is she still working atm? Technically does she have a valid pin?

How stressful for her!

Seems we are talking about the same uni as they are going back over the previous years, to see how long its been going on.

I assume she’s in the RCN so she should ask them for advice. Ultimately though this direction may have come from the nmc. As a pp said legally you can not be a nurse unless you’ve done 2300 of placement. So even though it seems batshit when she’s been working for two years they may have decided it’s the only way to do it. The nmc are not known for logical decisions.

is the nursing course still going? I know the midwifery one was closed down mid year. Some poor students were weeks from finishing.

The same university OP’s daughter went to then? That’s crazy. Someone has ballsed up haven’t they? 300 hours, so that’s over 7 weeks?

How can people do it now when they have financial commitments and cannot take unpaid time off to cover this? Plus they’re only going to be doing ‘student’ work, so they will be supernumerary and have to have traipse around with a qualified nurse.

Blimey as a nurse of nearly 25 years I have never known this to happen. It seems odd that they cannot just agree that her work hours should count. I mean she has been working I assume competently, for a reasonable amount of time. I would suggest contacting the NMC and RCN. Very poor from the uni.

She is still working as a community nurse and when she first started she did three months under supervision and was signed of for all the necessary procedures, so i see no point in doing more placement,Yes she has her pin.

With regards to the NMC 2300 hours, what happened with that for the nursing students who were deployed early into the workforce during peak covid? Had they all completed their leadership placement and banked their 2300?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp606pepj0wo.amp

Agree - I'd be contacting NMC and RCN. If these newly qualified nurses have been working since they qualified surely those hours count.
When I did my degree we all kept track of the hours we were doing so we knew exactly how many we had left to do etc. How rubbish of the uni. Hope it gets sorted quickly for your daughter, OP.

It’s a big error, can’t believe they called it an ‘oversight’. So sorry for your DD.

Their paid hours as ‘Aspirant Nurses’ counted as placement hours. The NMC removed the 12 week consolidation requirement so that as soon as they hit 2300 they could go to board and apply for pins.

Hopefully they will come to a sensible decision and allow hours worked to be counted.

Hopefully then it’s only those who have not gained employment yet that need to catch up on placement hours.

Thank you

Hopefully your daughters workplace is supportive about this: it's stressful but sounds like it's been a monumental balls up by the uni.

Other question to ask is did her breaks on placement count or not? That was a bone of contention when I was a student: our breaks did not count as placement hours, but the neighbouring uni did count breaks as placement. So if her breaks did not count, could potentially argue some extra hours there.

If she does have to do more hours, they should hopefully give her paid time off to complete a two week "placement" somewhere else in the trust, or in her current workplace.

She might enjoy a bit of a change...I would be pretty livid if someone said I had to go and do two weeks somewhere else now though 😅.

I would contact her current union and the NUS at the university. I’d be tempted to raise a formal complaint.

she needs to get a union rep to go along with her to the meeting with her employer. The how best to support her sounds positive and proactive but logistically how can she do 77 additional hours when already working. I’m assuming she won’t want to use annual leave to do it. Non fairness it isn’t her employers fault, nor hers. So depending on the outcome of the discussion with her employer would depend on what I would be asking for from
the university - potentially 77 hours of pay.

also it maybe worth going to the ombudsman for universities (there must be such a thing) if no reasonable outcome from the complaint to the university.

some university admin is notoriously shit and others brilliant. cCCU seems to fall in the former.