Supporting student nurses who have their first clinical placement in the community nursing team.

First year student nurses are increasingly undertaking their first placement with community nurses. The importance of how this initial learning experience is introduced by the higher education institution, as well as how the student is welcomed and integrated into the community nursing team, cannot be underestimated. Following positive anonymous feedback from students, which indicated that they had benefitted from the introduction, welcome and integration they experienced, the university and mentors reviewed how this had been done to identify good practice to share with colleagues. Students indicated that their welcome and integration had helped them to feel part of the team and enhanced learning, because they were so well supported, and mentors had facilitated learning experiences by acknowledging that this was their first placement experience. It is notable that mentors were committed to the students' learning and used workplace social capital to optimise the student experience. At a time when retention of students is essential to increase the future workforce, mentors dedicated to student learning are acting as ambassadors for the community workforce, and may well encourage students to have a career in community nursing.

Obtaining service user feedback for student nurses in the community setting.

Seeking service user feedback for student nurses who are engaged in community learning experiences is an important part of a mentor's role. This paper discusses what is currently advocated, the mentor's role in obtaining and managing feedback and makes recommendations to improve the process in the community practice setting.

Mentoring students: exploring and managing incivil behaviour in community nursing placements.

Students who demonstrate quiet incivility can be challenging and disrupt the learning that takes place in the community setting. Recognising incivility and acting to address this behaviour with students is difficult because the behaviour is not overt or obvious to others. The most important component in attempting to manage incivility is exploring the behaviour with the student to identify the potential cause, and negotiate a strategy to improve it. It is acknowledged that the behaviour may be due to personal, academic, or professional issues. If issues are not addressed, care activity and learning are affected, and this can result in failure to achieve in practice.

Implementing interprofessional learning in the community setting.

Given the need to facilitate and manage care, making every consultation count, knowledge of-and working with-different professional care providers is essential. To optimise care outcomes for clients, the adoption of interprofessional working is essential. This article describes how interprofessional learning was embedded in a community nursing practice placement environment with student nurses and students from other professions.

Preparing for a Nursing and Midwifery Council visit in the community setting.

Preparing for a Nursing and Midwifery Council placement monitoring visit can appear daunting if practitioners have not previously participated in the process. This paper identifies why visits are required and how practitioners and the local higher education provider representatives can work together to prepare. Based on the experience of the authors it is proposed that the visit is an opportunity to disseminate good practice linked to the education and mentorship of students. Suggestions linked to successful preparation are also shared to assist community nurse teams who encounter the process in the future. It is advocated that feedback from the visit can be used to further strengthen the practice learning experience for both mentors and students.

Reflect for success: use of mentor recommendations to help failing students.

Mentoring student nurses (STN) who fail to achieve can be distressing for all those involved in the process. A group of community nurse mentors (CNMs) and practice learning team teachers (PLTs) made recommendations to manage failing students. This paper reflects on the use of the recommendations in practice and discusses the impact on practice for the PLT and CNMs.

Reflect for success: recommendations for mentors managing failing students.

Failing a student nurse for not meeting clinical competency on a practice placement can be a distressing and traumatic event for both student and community nurse mentor. This paper describes how a reflective model can be used to support practitioners' to come to terms with the decision and action of failing a student and dealing with the aftermath of the final interview.

GPs' perceptions of the nurse practitioner role in primary care.

The role of nurse practitioner (NP) is increasingly integrated into the primary healthcare team, yet there remains some confusion among general practitioners about what the role entails. Following on from previous work (Carr et al, 2001), this study indicates that the majority of GPs surveyed were supportive of the integration of the NP role in primary care, both to help reduce the GPs' workload and more importantly to give the patient a choice of who to consult. However, there was some difference in opinion as to what tasks were most appropriately linked to the NP role. This may be due to the GPs' lack of knowledge and experience of the role. There were also some reservations about the financial cost of training and employing NPs. If the health needs of the population are to be met and high quality, seamless care provided, the NP could provide a solution.