Friday 24 September 2010

Possible Changes to Health Visitor Training

The Government's aim of recruiting an extra 4,200 extra Health Visitors by 2015 has led to some discussions about possible accelerated training routes for the job.

Currently, potential Health Visitors usually need two years' experience in Nursing before applying for training. However, new ideas include the possibility of on-the-job training or a direct entry training course.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi Col. The requirement for two years post-registration nursing was actually lifted about 10 years ago, it is just 'custom and practice' now. Not very helpful practice, either. A recent comment in Nursing Times about the wish to use nurses with 'relevant hospital experience' in health visiting teams led to a lot of discussion about whatever might be relevant in hospital nursing, and most people drew a blank! The big question is whether the useful things from nursing (biomedical knowledge, mostly) could be learnt more quickly and effectively by non-nurses, in a different, longer health visitor programme.