Impact of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (2018) future nurse: Standards of proficiency for registered nurses on children's nursing curriculum – A cross-sectional study

Background: Student nurses in the United Kingdom undertake field-specific pre-registration education. The implementation of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (2018) Future nurse: Standards of proficiency for registered nurses, has raised concerns that the increasingly generic component of pre-registration programmes is not adequately preparing newly qualified children's nurses to care for children safely. Objective: To investigate how the introduction of the Nursing and Midwifery Council standards in the United Kingdom has impacted the structure and field specific content of pre-registration children's nursing programmes. Settings: An online survey completed by 54 programmes, field, or professional leads linked to 76 pre-registration children's nursing programmes. This represents 80 % of higher education institutions with Nursing and Midwifery Council approved pre-registration children's nursing programmes across all four United Kingdom countries. Methods: A survey to capture the current content and changes to curricula since the introduction of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (2018) Future nurse standards. The survey included closed-ended and open-ended questions. Closed-ended questions were statistically analysed using SPSS v.28 for Windows. Open-ended questions were thematically analysed using Quircos v.2.1. Results: 50 % of respondents reported changes to theoretical content. In 27 programmes (35.5 %) there was a decrease in child-specific content. Child specific teaching methods accounted for less than 30 % of the content of all programmes whereas cross-field teaching methods (Adult, Mental Health, Learning Disability and Child learners together) accounted for over 70 % of the taught content. Analysis of qualitative data identified three themes: genericism as the focus, the challenge to achieve the standards' proficiencies, and dilution of child specific content. Conclusions: The survey responses show disparities in how United Kingdom higher education institutions have interpreted the Nursing and Midwifery Council standards highlighting academics concerns on the growing genericism within pre-registration children's nurse education nationally. These findings will inform the next stage of the project comparing the impact of greater or lesser degrees of genericism on the outcomes of the programme for newly qualified children's nurses.