Reviewing nursing and midwifery practice learning

Key lines of enquiry

In January 2025, our Council approved five key lines of enquiry. These key lines of inquiry were developed using evidence from the Nuffield Trust’s independent research, alongside findings from our evaluation of simulated practice learning for pre-registration nursing programmes, and evidence from our work to quality assure nursing and midwifery education programmes which includes insights and themes around practice learning.

We explored nursing and midwifery students’ practice learning in more detail by:

  1. Further examining the practice learning experiences of students with protected characteristics (including those who require reasonable adjustments) to understand how these are taken into account as part of students’ learning, and whether they impact student retention
  2. Exploring if we should expand the type of support we offer to students, practice supervisors and practice assessors, including strengthening requirements for protected learning time for nursing associate students
  3. Developing indicators and metrics to measure the quality of students’ practice learning as part of our education quality assurance function. This will help us to understand where we can better support students to achieve the proficiencies they need to deliver the best care for people
  4. Evaluating key aspects of the midwifery curricula to understand midwifery students’ practice learning experiences, including what works well and what could be improved. This will help us to understand how they can be best supported to achieve their midwifery specific proficiencies, for example, number of births
  5. Evaluating key aspects of nursing curricula including what works well and what could be improved. This will help us to understand nursing students’ relationships with our education standards, and how they can be best supported to achieve the proficiencies within their intended field of nursing.

We worked closely in partnership with key stakeholders and subject matter experts from across the UK to explore these KLOEs, many of whom form part of our independent steering group and student and public advisory groups.

What we found

The findings from our KLOEs, along with our independent research and extensive stakeholder engagement, found that while many students across the UK benefit from positive practice learning experiences, the quality of these experiences can vary.

We also found that wider factors beyond the NMC’s remit – such as practice learning capacity, cost of living, and resource or workload pressures – can affect students’ practice learning experiences.

This demonstrates that, while the NMC sets education standards, we cannot tackle these challenges alone. Achieving meaningful, lasting improvements will require collective action across the health and care system, with stakeholders working together to create high-quality, impactful practice learning experiences.