Second and final-year nursing and midwifery students have hit out at a “stressful” and “humiliating” rule that prevents those with supplemental exams from attending their first week of placement, forcing some to attend placement during their Christmas holidays.
Nursing and midwifery students can only start placement if they pass their previous year. Currently, however, the results of supplemental exams are released in the same week as the start of placements for second and fourth years, meaning some have to wait an extra week to start.
Given that nursing and midwifery students are required to complete a certain number of weeks of placement, the late start means some have to make up the hours over the course of the year.
Students can try to make up for lost placement time during reading week, but the School of Nursing and Midwifery encourages students to do the placement over the Christmas break as there is no guarantee that hospital areas will have spaces open for students at any other time.
In a statement to The University Times, Laura Stockwell, the class representative for third-year midwifery students, said that “students are upset that they are being asked to make up time owing over the Christmas holidays”.
“For my class, this is our last guaranteed Christmas off as we will be qualified next year”, she said. “People have booked holidays and made plans. For us, this is the first time this issue has arisen and we had never heard of it before so we assumed our scheduled time off for Christmas was a sure thing.”
For fourth years, the timeline for completing their allotted placement is narrower still: they must make up the time they have missed before the beginning of their internships, which usually begin in January. They must complete all their mandatory placements in order to pass their course.
In a statement to The University Times, Aoife Livingston, a third-year nursing student who is currently awaiting supplemental exam results before finding out if she can progress to fourth year, said that “having repeats is stressful enough but to be made not start on time and the wards knowing why is extremely humiliating”.
The rules for nursing and midwifery students are particularly stringent – medicine students, for example, are allowed to start their placement before finding out if they have passed the previous year.
In a statement to The University Times, Sophie Cadwell, a nursing student waiting to find out if she can proceed to second year, echoed Livingston’s comments. “It’s embarrassing enough having to explain to my friends why I won’t see them on placement because I failed an assignment”, she said.
Although students waiting on supplemental exam results can’t start placement, they still have to attend lectures and clinical preparation sessions.
In an email statement to The University Times, Anne-Marie Brady, the Head of the School of Nursing and Midwifery, said the ruling about placement start dates is “not new, nor is it related to TEP”.
Brady said that because nursing and midwifery are both professional degrees, certain requirement “must be met in order for students to achieve professional registration”.
“The School does its utmost to turn around results in a timely manner, however, given the constraints of the professional degree curriculum it is unavoidable that a small group of students who are required to undertake supplementals will have this short overlap”, she added.
Saoirse McGinn, whose supplemental results will decide if she can progress to second year of nursing, told The University Times that “the stress of having to repeat the week of placement looms over my head as I can’t plan anything for the Christmas and summer breaks as I’ve not been given a set date to make it up”.
Megan O’Connor, Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union’s (TCDSU) Off Campus Officer and a nursing student, told The University Times that it’s “shocking that nursing and midwifery students who are sitting supplemental exams are expected to attend lectures (a week earlier than the rest of the college) while waiting for their results but are not allowed to attend clinical placement the following week”.
“This is proving particularly difficult for final year students as it adds further stress to their existing workload”, she said.
Speaking to The University Times, Moya Howse, who is hoping to go into final year after supplemental exams results are released, said: “As well as the stress this inflicts on us as students, this insane format increases the workload for the staff organising our placements, to have to organise some students to start one week and others the following week.”
She added: “This situation that is inflicted on staff and students year after year is utterly nonsensical and easily rectified if someone only tried.”
