NMC publishes reports from post-registration nursing standards

We’ve published the findings from our consultation on our draft new post-registration standards for specialist community nursing and specialist community public health nursing.

Modernising our standards will ensure they reflect contemporary practice, and benefit thousands of professionals and the people they care for in the community.

To highlight our findings we have published two reports, both produced by independent research agencies:

• a report into consultation responses 

Updated 21 February 2022 to include Appendix D in full

• a report into user testing of the standards

Great response to our work so far

The consultation sought views on three sets of draft standards: those for specialist community public health nursing (SCPHN), those for community nursing specialist practice qualification (SPQs) and the associated programme standards.

A large majority of the 2,363 respondents welcomed the three sets of standards, agreeing they were largely fit for purpose:

• 75 per cent agree that the draft core and field specific standards of proficiency reflect the specialist knowledge, skills, and attributes necessary for all SCPHN registrants. There was strong agreement that they meet the proficiency requirements for health visitors (76%), occupational health nurses (79%) and school nurses (83%).
• For SPQ, we asked about the applicability of the draft standards for each of the seven platforms of nursing. 72-88 per cent across the five fields of SPQ practice agreed they were applicable. 64 per cent of all respondents felt the standards were appropriate for nurses who practice in other community settings.
• For post-registration programme standards for both SCPHN and SPQ at least 67 per cent agreed with most of the proposals, with higher levels of agreement for many of them.

So what’s next?

We’ll now work with partners from across health and social care to use this evidence to consider how we can refine the standards we consulted on. This will ensure the standards form the foundations of excellent education and practice in SCPHN and SPQ nursing.

Professor Geraldine Walters CBE, Executive Director of Professional Practice at the NMC, said:

“We’re pleased there’s been so much interest in this work, which is borne out by the number of consultation responses we received. It was one of our most popular recent consultations, with well over 2,000 responses representing a wide range of views, including different fields of practice and all four nations of the UK.

“We’re pleased that the responses are generally positive with most people supporting the ambition and intention of these future standards. We also received lots of wider useful feedback, and it will take a few months to give the responses the consideration and scrutiny they deserve. We’ll refine the standards and then take them to a public Council meeting for approval.”

Find out more about our next steps

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