HEE COVID-19 student data collections to support paid placement deployment

As a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, both the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) and the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) are offering revised education programmes for nursing, midwifery and allied health profession students. As a part of these revised programmes, selected students are able to opt-in to undertake paid-placements/work opportunities that allow students to remain on their programme while undertaking paid work to support the NHS at this crucial time.

HEE has asked all universities that offer nursing, midwifery or allied health profession courses to contact their eligible students to enquire whether they would like to undertake the revised programme and therefore ‘opt-in’ to a paid-placement/work opportunity.

Details of students who choose to opt-in will be reported to HEE by universities through two new data collection tools, and through ‘Regional Workforce Cells’ HEE will support HEIs in placing those students with NHS provider organisations such as hospitals.

Students Opting In

Health Education England can confirm that as of Friday 17 July 2020 the number of students that have opted to and are eligible to take up a paid-placement/work opportunity are as follows:

Student Nurses and Student Midwives – 28,108

Allied Health Professional Students (AHP) – 7,896

* Nurses & Midwives data is from 64 out of 64 Universities

* AHP data from 65 out of 68 Universities- please note not all universities provide AHP courses

The Data Collections

The data collection tools are modelled on the HEE Student Data Collection Tool, which HEE uses to gather information on students as part of its normal day to day business and are hosted as part of HEE’s eCollection portal. The profession specific data collection tools can be found here .

Through these tools, HEE is collecting data related to:

• All postgraduate pre-registration nursing students (including those on programmes such as District Nurse Specialist Practice and Specialist Community Public Health Nursing);
• Second and third year undergraduate nursing students (of all disciplines);
• All postgraduate pre-registration midwifery students;
• Second and third year undergraduate midwifery students;
• Selected undergraduate and postgraduate (pre-registration) allied health profession students.
• Second year Healthcare Science (Practitioner Training Programme) students requiring a placement.

The types of data needed include:

• Information on the students – their information, their eligibility, their decision – to opt-in to the revised programme offer;
• Details of student preferences for deployment;
• Key recruitment details (e.g. National Insurance Numbers to link to the NHS Electronic Service Record).

Frequently Asked Questions

A Frequently Asked Questions document to aid universities/HEIs to conduct the collections can be accessed here.

For nursing and midwifery

• Guidance on student options can be found here.
• A joint letter from Mark Radford and Ruth May to nursing and midwifery students can be found here.

For allied health professions

• Guidance on student options can be found here.

• A joint letter from Beverley Harden and Suzanne Rastrick to allied health profession students can be found here.

For healthcare science students

• Guidance on student options can be found here.
• A joint letter from Sue Hill and Berne Ferry to healthcare science students can be found here.

For undergraduate pharmacy students

A similar data collection has been created to facilitate undergraduate pharmacy students to support the NHS at this time. The terms of offer to students is different to that for nursing, midwifery and AHP students. Further information for undergraduate pharmacy students can be found here; access to the pharmacy student COVID-19 deployment survey can be found here.