The District Nursing Degree Apprenticeship has been a great experience. It has enabled me to understand the wider picture, to look outside of district nursing, and to identify problems outside of my normal perspective.

As we work within the community – going into people’s homes – we’re able to gain a unique perspective on problems they may be having and ways in which their lives could be improved. If it’s a community problem, it could be a district nursing problem too.

I attended a Westminster conference around UK gambling policy reform and following these discussions I was able to bring that knowledge into practice where in my organisation we are developing a standard operating procedure that safeguards patients and staff members.

Another project my apprenticeship has enabled me to work on has been based around improving the number of South Asian people going for diabetic reviews, after I noticed an inequality in this area. I’ve been able to go to a local community centre and listen to some of the women there as they shared their problems and explained why they weren’t attending their reviews. This then led to follow up calls where we were able to target these individuals and get them booked in for their review.

This degree apprenticeship has equipped me with the skills and confidence to continue to tackle these health inequalities in practice.