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Undergraduate prize-winner Laura Gallagher from Napier University talks to us about community mental health nursing. I am a 2nd year mental health nursing student who has been lucky enough to have had some fantastic community placements. Community nursing struck a chord with me straight away.  From first setting foot through the door of placement; I knew I was going to like it! I really enjoy the personal aspect; hearing people’s story and the autonomy that community nursing allows the service user to have.   I found out I had won the Queens Nursing Institute Scotland prize through an email from…

University of Dundee undergraduate prizewinner Kara Mackie tells us of her journey into community nursing. The first placement of my nursing career was a community placement and from the moment I arrived, I knew this was where my heart was and the path I would pursue. My mentor gave me the opportunity to work in various settings within the community including health visiting, district nursing and anticipatory care. I loved hearing from people about their personal stories and how they manage their conditions or cope with being a first time mother.  It is such a dynamic and varied area where I was able to work autonomously within the…

Andrea Taylor, Post Graduate Prizewinner at the University of Edinburgh tells us about putting person centred care into practice. As a Community Midwife within NHS Lothian, I was offered the opportunity to undertake a Person Centred Care in Practice (PCCiP) MSc module at Edinburgh University Summer School in 2014. This allowed me to explore women centred care within midwifery through models and frameworks used in nursing care and introduced me to new ways of seeing. During the module I began to reflect on how, fundamentally, midwifery, as a practice and model grew naturally within the realms of women centred, relationship…

Emma Hay-Higgins won the Post Graduate Prize for Robert Gordon University, and here tells us her story. Receiving notification that I had won a Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland Postgraduate Award was a lovely surprise.  It is a great honour to receive recognition for the work and learning undertaken as part of my Specialist Public Health Nursing studies, especially alongside the wonderfully committed and compassionate nurses who achieved their qualification with me.  My journey into Health Visiting has probably followed a less traditional path, having had fewer years of nursing experience to draw upon prior to commencing the course.  I thoroughly…

Student Nurse Sarah Wilson tells us how a day working in the community looks. A quote from a district nurse that I read in an article before starting my management placement in the community inspired me to think about the true meaning of community nursing. Jan Laskey (2014) stated: “I love being a part of a person’s life, supporting them and trying to find solutions to difficult situations. You always get to know patients differently in their own homes. I truly believe that meeting the patients family, especially any pets is really important. I always introduce myself to a cat…

Beth Cropley, Undergraduate QNIS prizewinner for University of Edinburgh tells us why she wants to become a community nurse. My first experience of community nursing was with a health visiting team in an area of socio-economic deprivation in Edinburgh. I’m sad to admit that I initially went into this placement expecting it to be boring and to be ‘just weighing babies’ all day; however I finished this placement with an ambition to become a health visitor. It did not take me long to work out that community nursing was, in fact, challenging and exciting, with the essential requirement to use…