Corinne Fallows

Ward Sister, Medium Secure Forensic Mental Health Care, St George’s Hospital, Stafford, Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

FoNS Inspire Improvement Fellow

In terms of the team, we were struggling with recruitment and retention. Part of my role as matron became working with the student nurses, supporting them on their placements, and trying to get them interested in coming to work with us after. And it’s had a great impact. We probably had about one or two in 2021, six in 2022 and then this year we’ve had 15.

I think the key thing for me was learning about doing with people rather than doing to. Working together with the students, we formulated a preceptorship programme, and then they joined the preceptorship programme as newly qualified nurses, and then they evaluated it with me and then we changed it for the next cohort. The 2022 cohort of newly qualified nurses also helped us to design knowledge and skill sessions; forensic inpatient care is quite a specialist area, so we have co-produced sessions with some of the service user groups, for example the role of the key nurse, which has been really well received.