Challenging misconceptions and raising the profile of learning disability nursing

I am a third-year student Learning Disabilities Nurse at University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol. Last year I enrolled on the Council of Deans Student Leadership Programme. As part of this I was encouraged to carry out a project within my university. I teamed up with student Occupational Therapist Charlotte Owen, who is also studying at UWE and is a part of the Student Leadership Programme. Together we created the ‘How to become a healthcare hero’ project. We were both particularly interested in raising the profile of lesser known healthcare professions to young people in sixth forms or colleges.

Due to Covid-19, we adapted the project into a virtual event. This worked really well as we were able to access more students on the virtual platform at one time than we would have been able to in person. We ran a pilot in July where we represented four professions (Learning Disabilities Nursing, Adult Nursing, Occupational Therapy and Diagnostic Radiography). We had a student representative from each profession giving a 10-minute presentation involving, an overview of the profession, how the profession has contributed to overcoming the pandemic and some insight into their personal journeys into healthcare. We also facilitated a question and answer session at the end. We then ran the full event in November, representing ten professions.

When I was in college, I had no idea that Learning Disabilities Nursing existed. Therefore, my main aim from this project was to raise awareness of this healthcare profession and potentially influence the younger generation into a future career of LD nursing. I was able to showcase the huge variety of career opportunities available as a Learning Disabilities Nurse and tackle some of the misconceptions and myths around the profession. For example, “it is not real nursing” or “learning disabilities nurses are glorified support workers”.

I hope that by creating this project, I have been able to inspire young people with the exciting career option that I wish I had known about years ago. We plan to continue running these events online for the foreseeable future. We are working in collaboration with UWE to ensure the project can run sustainably after we graduate and continue to reach and engage with as many young people as possible.

Anna Mulvihill, third-year student Learning Disabilities Nurse