Fit for purpose: does specialist community nurse education prepare nurses for practice?

This paper sets out to explore the experience of newly qualified community nurses, one year on in practice, and to establish if the specialist course prepares them for the reality of practice. It presents a piece of action re search evaluating the education process for community nurses through a seri es of cycles of self-reflection which lead to recommendations for both poli cy and curriculum changes. Our findings show that community nurses are very positive about their new roles and their work with clients and patients, t hat they are able to use their newly acquired analytical skills in their pr actice, but felt inadequately prepared for the reality of practice. Our mos t significant finding was the lack of preparation for the world of work, th e pressure of work and the pace of activity in the health service. As curri culum planners we realized that the course fell short in preparing for actu al practice. As a result, changes to the course are underway and in partner ship with local health trusts we have set up a support programme for newly qualified community nurses. Our work in community nurse education builds up on the findings from the Peach Report (1999), which only looked at pre-regi stration nursing and midwifery education. (C) 2001 Harcourt Publishers Ltd.