Empowering populations: Celebrating Manchester Met’s nursing apprentices
On Wednesday 9 September 2024, over 200 guests attended our annual Community Nursing Showcase event, including eighty apprentices from across our Community Nursing Specialist (District Nursing) and Specialist Community Public Health Nurse Postgraduate Diploma apprenticeship programmes. Our apprentices presented their final projects, under this year’s theme of: “Empowering Populations to Enhance Health and Wellbeing”.
During the event, each of our eighty apprentices presented a poster detailing their public health interventions, showcasing the outstanding public health work they have accomplished over the past year, with a select few giving face-to-face presentations.
Karen Hughes, Academic Lead on the SCPHN (Health Visiting) programme said:
This nursing showcase marks the result of our apprentices’ dedication and effort over the past thirteen months. These innovative projects highlight their commitment to improving community services and developing and implementing public health and wellbeing initiatives within their local communities. We’re extremely proud to see how much they’ve accomplished in such a short space of time, the impact they’ve all had is wonderful.
The projects tackled a huge range of public health issues, including vaping awareness, the mental health needs of people seeking asylum, childhood obesity, head injuries, allergy awareness, managing anxiety, oral health, toddler nutrition, and many more. All projects saw real-world implementation in their community.
Amanda Hobson, a District Nurse apprentice at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, presented her ‘Prevent the Pressure’ project, addressing the critical issue of pressure ulcers. Her initiative aims to empower carers by equipping them with the knowledge needed to prevent these ulcers. Amanda’s research revealed that pressure ulcers cost the NHS an astounding £3.8 million per day, highlighting gaps in current training and awareness. By hosting evidence-based training sessions, a champion scheme, and developing a new skin awareness tool, Amanda successfully increased the knowledge of local healthcare practitioners by 54%.
Following the presentations, our apprentices and their guests had the chance to network, discuss each other’s projects in greater detail, and vote for their favourite posters. One of the winners was Aoife Meade, a Specialist Community Public Health Nurse (School Nurse), whose project focused on gaming among school-aged children. Her work emphasised the need to address this growing national issue much earlier than it is currently being tackled.
We’ve been engaged in a year long process of empowerment and public health initiatives which we’ve cultivated and implemented over the year, and today we’re presenting everything we’ve done. It’s been really good to get around and see everyone else’s because you’re so caught up in your own work most of the time. My project ties in with some of the other projects in the room around digital technology, so they complement each other nicely. Working on this project has been one of the highlights of this course because of the reach and the impact it has had. Today’s been great.
We are extremely proud of the meaningful impact our apprentices have made in their communities, and this year’s event was a brilliant opportunity for them to demonstrate their hard work to their peers, practice assessors and supervisors, trust managers and clinical leads, and apprenticeship unit staff.
Our Community Nursing Specialist (District Nursing) PgDip apprenticeship prepares employees for the changing face of community nursing and the needs of service users in the future. Whilst our Specialist Community Public Health Nurse PgDip apprenticeship has been designed to meet the contemporary health and wellbeing needs of individuals, communities and populations, offering two distinct pathways for health visiting and school nursing.
These comprehensive 13-month programmes, delivered by the School of Nursing and Public Health, equip participants with the skills and knowledge required to become confident specialist nurses, capable of making a significant positive impact on the health and wellbeing of their communities.
Our provision is award-winning. The University has been named Training Provider of the Year at the North West Apprenticeship Awards 2023, and Nurse Education Provider (Post-registration) of the Year at the Student Nursing Times Awards 2023. Our nurses have also garnered individual recognition, winning SAPHNA School Nurse Student of the Year 2023 and iHV Health Visitor Student of the Year 2023.
You can find out more about the University’s degree apprenticeship programmes here.
If you’re interested in offering our programmes to your workforce and becoming an employer partner, please contact us.
