Tips for nursing students who are starting their studies

Well, you’ve made it! You’ve started at university to begin your journey to becoming a registered nurse. Some of you might be coming straight from school or college, whilst others from different walks of life. Whatever route you’ve taken, it’s likely to have taken a few years’ of work to get to this point, to achieve the entry requirements and get through recruitment and selection. You might have had some doubts along the way about whether you’d make it but you have! And now you are here with your nursing degree programme stretching out ahead of you. It’s quite some time since I was in your position but I can still vividly remember those first few weeks, when everything felt so new and unfamiliar and, if I’m honest, a little overwhelming. And yet, almost 40 years later, I still look back on my student days as being a formative and crucial foundation for my subsequent clinical and academic career. So, as you start out on your university education, what are some of the key things for you to think about?