The RCN has announced it intends to re-establish its own education institute.
The organisation said the centre would offer ‘extensive’ educational programmes, award degrees, and ‘help tomorrow’s nursing staff find their way’.
Making the announcement at RCN’s annual Congress today (6 June), general secretary and chief executive Pat Cullen said the institute would ensure members’ ‘appetite to learn and develop’ was ‘matched by opportunities to do so’.
Building on existing education and learning programmes available through the RCN, the institute will collaborate with universities to progress nursing research, offer the RCN’s own professorships and fund PhD programmes for nurses.
Ms Cullen added: ‘We will collaborate, engage and work with the profession to make this institute a centre of excellence for years to come.’
The first degrees were offered by the RCN Institute for Advanced Nursing Education in 1987, in collaboration with the University of Manchester and later with the University of London and the University of Surrey – but the institute was later closed.
