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Student hub

Welcome to our hub for student nurses, midwives and trainee nursing associate (TNA), designed in collaboration with students to help support you in your studies and journey into your healthcare career. Take a look around the hub to find out more about us and what resources are available to help support and advise you.

NHS England workforce, training and education, work with partners to plan, recruit, educate and train the health workforce. We are people centered, committed to the NHS Constitution, and driven by our own values, which are responsible, fair, confident, and inclusive.

Watch the animation below to find out more about who we are, what we do, and how we can support you through your career.

Creating the new NHS England

On 1 April 2023, Health Education England (HEE) came together with NHS England to create a new organisation. All the responsibilities of HEE transferred into the new NHS England. This includes planning and educating the health workforce; ensuring that the healthcare workforce has the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours to deliver excellent healthcare and health improvement to patients and the public.

While you may see some changes in our branding and email contacts over the next couple of weeks, please be assured that engaging with students and learners is important to us, and this will not impact on the way we continue to connect with you. We are continuing with our development of the student hub with your help, sign up to be involved.

We supports the delivery of excellent healthcare by ensuring that the workforce of today and tomorrow has the right numbers, skills, values, and behaviours, at the right time and in the right place.

How can you work with us?

We want to hear from you as students and trainees so that you can help us inform our work.

We have several opportunities to contribute, including our student council, focus groups, and social media activity so please let us know if you’d like to be involved.

Find out more

Q & A Webinar with senior nurses and midwives for students and newly qualified staff - Tuesday 17 October, 11:30am

Hosted by students Juliana and Emma. This is an opportunity for you to ask questions to a panel of senior nurses and midwives.

We have lots of resources to help you during the course of your studies. We have outlined some of these below and will add more as we develop this hub:

NHS Knowledge and Library Services

You always need a library and the NHS Knowledge and Library Service has a huge collection of digital knowledge resources – just for health and care staff and students.

The resources are carefully chosen so everyone in health and care can easily get the best, most up to date and trusted information they need – for study, work and development.

While you are studying the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub is ideal. Your library is online and this Hub lets you quickly and easily find what you need, without the noise of a normal web search. You can find:

- Thousands of professional journal articles

- Invaluable e-books – like OUP handbooks, the Royal Marsden Manual or Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines

- Study aids and guidelines

When you’re on placement – go to find your NHS library, as well as all the literature and study resources you need, the library team are the experts! They can help you find the information you’re looking for, improve research skills and navigate your study challenges.

You need your NHS OpenAthens account for access - use your student placement email address if you are not already registered.

BMJ Best Practice – the free, national clinical decision support tool

Whatever your clinical specialism, reach for BMJ Best Practice for the latest evidence on thousands of clinical topics, case reports, medical calculators, videos on common procedures and more. Day or night, on or offline.

For general study or while on placement, BMJ Best Practice is provided free to NHS staff and students. Find out more.

To help take a look at specific web pages for resources relevant to your studies.

elearning for healthcare

elearning for healthcare delivers and develops more than 400 e-learning programmes in collaboration with organisations including Royal Colleges, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England.

These programmes are free to access and available to you as students and trainees. The elearning programmes cover a broad range of topics to help you in your studies and prepare you for placements.

Learning hub

Students and trainees have access to the learning hub where you can find videos, guidance documents and virtual reality resources on a range of different topics. These resources are all developed by NHS colleagues along with our technology enhanced learning team. The learning hub also allows you the opportunity to give feedback on the resources available. Make sure you check out this resource.

Makaton Resources

Going to hospital book - This book is an accessible publication for patients with learning disability or autism and aims to help children and young people with additional needs to know what they might expect to see when visiting for an appointment or when being admitted for a procedure. The book can be used to build communication and relationships between the child and health professionals, including you as students, to help the child feel empowered and in control of their health decisions.

Access to healthcare is for all - Nikki, a paramedic has written a blog on her Makaton journey and why it is so rewarding.

Makaton Video Resources

Makaton training - Find out more about Makaton training and opportunities for you to complete a Makaton training course.

History of Makaton

The National Education and Training Survey (NETS) is open!

The NETS is your survey. We want to hear from you. Your diverse skills, experience and knowledge will help us to shape the future of education and training according to those who understand it best.

The NETS is the voice of the current and future healthcare workforce. It is the only national survey open to all students, trainees and doctors and dentists undertaking a practice placement or training post in healthcare services across England.

The survey takes 10 minutes to complete and is anonymous. Your feedback is vital in ensuring that all learning environments are safe, inclusive and support you to develop in your professional career. All learning environments should enable healthcare professionals to work together to deliver the highest standards of care to the communities we serve.

The NETS is crucial to the educational quality improvement work of NHS England, we can interrogate its outcomes in much greater detail than surveys facilitated by third parties.

As a student nurse, midwife, or TNA you will receive support and guidance through your university. If you have any questions or concerns this be your main source of guidance – please do not be afraid to seek advice. The main areas of support that your university provides include:

- Your mental health and wellbeing.

- Academic tutor support, pastoral support, and support for online and remote learning.

- Informal support, such as that given from societies, unions, student forums, friends and family and support groups.

While you are on placement they will be lots of people around to support you. This may come from your practice supervisor, practice assessor, and academic assessor but of course from the wider team within which you are placed. Of course, your support from your university will still be there for you to. Please do not be nervous about asking for help or asking questions

Watch this video on practice assessors for more information. Standards for student supervision and assessment can be found on the NMC website, where you can also find supporting information on standards for student supervision and assessment.

Freedom to Speak Up – it’s important that we all feel able to speak up to stop potential harm and your university will have spoken to you about the actions to take if you have concerns. You can of course talk to someone within the team in which you are placed or to your university. Additionally, each NHS Trusts will have a Freedom to Speak up Guardian who is there to help. You can share your concerns anonymously and confidentially if you would prefer.. To find out more about the role of a freedom to Speak Up guardian watch this video. If you would like more information about finding your local guardian, please visit the national guardian webpage.

Financial support - you can find information about student finance on the gov.uk website.

As of 1 September 2023 the government have increased financial support to make healthcare studies more affordable. Key changes include:

- Travel and accommodation support for healthcare students to be raised by 50%

- Raising of the means-testing threshold for the NHS Bursary Scheme