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Workforce

How district nursing can influence the Nursing and Midwifery Council's review of practice learning

02 May 2025

Comment

02 May 2025

Volume 30 · Issue 5

ISSN (print): 1462-4753

ISSN (online): 2052-2215

diverse nursing professionals

Abstract

District nurses have a key role in healthcare delivery for local communities. Recruitment, retention, education and training are key to ensuring a competent professional district nursing workforce. The importance of ensuring that district nurses are actively engaged in supporting pre-registration nursing programmes to showcase district nursing as a career and support workforce development must not be underestimated. The Nursing and Midwifery Council is currently undertaking a review of pre-registration nursing and midwifery practice learning. The review is being co-produced with key stakeholders, students, service users, practice learning partners and universities, to answer five key lines of enquiry which have been identified form the discovery work presented to the council in January 2025. This article provides an overview of the work and encourages people to join the community of interest to support the review.

Community nursing has a key role to play in the future health and wellbeing of the UK's population (Chilton, 2025), predicted to grow by 4.9 million (7.3%) from mid–2022 to mid–2032 (Office for National Statistics, 2025). An example of the demographic changes is the number of people receiving the state pension—using the current state pension age of 67 years, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates a 13.8% increase in people at state pension age (Office for National Statistics, 2025).

District nursing teams work across the lifespan and are not restricted to caring for older people. This means that demographic changes across the lifespan inevitably have an impact on district nursing teams. Policies that underpin health and social care across the UK also reflect these changes (Department of Health Northern Ireland, 2016; Scottish Government, 2016; Welsh Government, 2018; NHS England 2019). However, the reality is that in practice district nurse caseloads do not have a minimum or maximum threshold, therefore, putting greater pressure on them and their teams to cope with this increasing demand and to ensure that people receive optimum care. This context is worthy of further consideration.

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