Experienced nurses should be financially encouraged to maintain their clinical skills as they move up the career ladder, a Royal College of Nursing (RCN) conference has heard.
Nurses from across primary and secondary care took to the stand during a discussion at this year’s RCN Congress in Liverpool which explored the risks of experienced nurses moving away from clinical areas and ‘losing’ their direct nursing skills in order to progress into management or more senior positions.
Frances Baverstock, an RCN General Practice Nursing Forum member and clinical governance lead at Plas Menai Health Centre, stressed the importance of incentivising senior nurses to remain in clinical practice.
‘These roles should be as highly paid, valued and acknowledged as non-clinical roles are,’ Ms Baverstock said.
She described how nurses in management positions have often ‘left their practical skills behind’ to move to better paid non-clinical posts.
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‘They [experienced nurses] should be encouraged financially to stay as clinical experienced nurses, rather than become a manager to be able to progress financially and in their career as nurses,’ she explained.
‘We should allow, encourage and celebrate our very experienced nurses to stay in clinical areas, whilst also having the opportunities to lead, manage and pass on their valuable skills and inspire junior nurses,’ she added.
Using clinical practice as a nurse lecturer
Chinenye Ubah, an adult nursing lecturer from the RCN Eastern Region, said maintaining clinical practice was also important for nurses looking to switch career paths and not just those looking for a more senior role.
She described the need to ‘remain clinically relevant’ in her current academic post to keep ‘up to date’ and feel confident when teaching students.
Ms Ubah explained how she regularly updates her clinical skills outside of her working hours.
‘I work five days of a week, and I have only two days off to rest, and then sometimes within these two days I go into practice,’ she said.
While she is not contracted to take on this extra work, Ms Ubah said she feels this additional training is needed to do her job ‘properly’ and to battle ‘out of date knowledge’.
‘If you think about a nursing institution where everybody remains in the classroom and nobody continues to update their knowledge, there will be a time when no one will be confident enough to deliver the skills,’ Ms Ubah warned.
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The role of simulation-based learning
Another speaker explained how simulation-based learning could be used when ‘bridging the gap’ between theoretical and practice-based learning and encouraging the clinical confidence of staff and students.
Anastesia Nzute is a public health doctoral researcher at Wolverhampton University where she uses simulation classes to provide safe opportunities for students to practice their clinical skills.
‘High quality simulation allows us to maintain clinical thinking, refine essential skills and stay aligned with current practice,’ she explained.
Ms Nzute added: ‘It’s very important that we maintain our direct clinical skills. Moving away from regular hands-on practice can lead to a gradual decline in confidence and competence in some procedures and decision-making processes.
‘This could affect not only our professional development, but also affect the learning experience of our students.’
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But she added that ‘simulation alone’ was unable to ‘fully replicate’ the reality of live patient experience.
Also at Congress yesterday, the RCN’s chief executive and general secretary said general practice nurses must not be expected to wait any longer for news on their pay for 2025/26.
The lack of awareness and understanding around the role of nurses in general practice was also highlighted as part of a discussion on raising the profile of the profession.
