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I remember sitting in my first seminar at university, being urged to find my ‘why’. That one grounding reason that we were going to subject ourselves to (at least) three years of full-time
education. The thing that we must reflect on when times get tough; and we were promised, times will get tough. Without a doubt, being a student nurse is hard! We have one of the longest
years, we work long hours, all shift patterns and of course, ultimately, we see the amazing highs and crippling lows of life. So, this one idea, our why is meant to be a salve – an ambition
strong enough to keep us on the course until completion – our educator’s response to the attrition rate for students. > "You must have a 'why', and it had better be
good" Now, as we approach the long winter, and second-year blues are setting in among my cohort, ‘why’ seems to be an echo in the corridors of practice; the university and our social
media. A group of peers refusing to leave anyone behind – tapping into those shared pledges we all made over a year ago to bolster each other. It would be easy to feel lonely as a student
nurse. At this time of year, my cohort are all thrown to every corner of the county, often on their own, to attend placement. With the exception of an exam, I won’t see my peers until the
new year. Those of us who have made it this far have made friendships that will tide us through until we meet again in person. When I started this degree, when I started considering why I
wanted to go back to university and ultimately be a nurse, the social side wasn’t even on my radar. I was a mature student. I had my uni friends from my first degree and I just wanted to do
the job. Now my peers would make up a major part of my why. That’s the great crux of it though – you must have a 'why', and it had better be good. Nursing is tough. Statistics for
student nurse attrition quote that between 10% and 25% won’t finish their degree and, thereafter, three in five will go on to work in an NHS post. There are of course a range of factors
involved in that, but I’d argue that college leavers feeling ill-prepared is a factor. It’s not the sort of degree that one can be pushed into by a personal tutor, you must want it. Which
brings us back around to the scary thing – fewer want it. This year, there were 16% fewer applications to nursing. Nurses have had a whole lot of press in the last few years. First being
risen to hero status during the pandemic, making them almost unattainable saintly figures. Then they were dragged through the press for the strikes over pay. I don’t think either paints a
particularly inspiring or appealing image to the average college leaver – the responsibility of life and death but one of the lowest graduate wages. So, I suppose the question I’m left with
is how do we inspire people to be nurses? How do we convince people to care? I don’t have the answers, I don’t think anyone does at this moment in time. As students, we talk between us about
why we want to be nurses and find that even those answers are evolving. The cynic in me wonders if the current socio-economic climate will foster young people who want to spend that long in
higher education for a job that, at the moment, pays little more than working in a warehouse. For me, I think of all of this in the backdrop of the government’s plan to increase degree
places by a third over the next five years. An ambitious plan to help with the crisis in the workforce. I do wonder, who will be filling those spaces and what might their ‘why’ be? _Lucy
Allen is a second-year, adult and mental health nursing student at the University of Plymouth and 2023-24 Nursing Times student editor_ MORE STUDENT BLOGS