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Student nurses must be ‘stewards of public health’

Published: 18 January 2019 at 11:30

Nurse in uniform crossing arms

Deputy Chief Nurse for Public Health England delivers guest lecture in Chelmsford

Student nurses were encouraged to be the “stewards of public health” by Deputy Chief Nurse for Public Health England (PHE), Joanne Bosanquet MBE, when she visited Anglia Ruskin University.

Mrs Bosanquet spoke to around 50 second-year Nursing students about the “three Ps of public health”; Prevention, Promotion, and Protection, with a particular focus on antimicrobial resistance.

The interactive session, held at Anglia Ruskin’s Chelmsford campus, was part of PHE’s All Our Health campaign, designed to guide healthcare professionals in preventing illness, protecting health and promoting wellbeing.

Mrs Bosanquet said:

“It was an absolute pleasure to be invited to spend some time with the second-year cohort of nursing undergraduates.

“A major component of my national role is to be as visible as I can be and be as close to our profession as possible. I cannot lead if I don’t know what the needs of our future Registered Nurses are. In addition, our future nurses won’t know how to lead effectively if they don’t know what we’re doing to support their development.

“Our focus for the interactive learning session was on antimicrobial resistance and how we all can become stewards in order to promote healthy lives, protect the antibiotics we have and prevent infections in the first place.

“We worked through some actions to achieve this, which included actions to take whilst on placement as well as what they can do as citizens and family members.”


Professor Ruth Taylor, Dean of the Faculty of Health, Education, Medicine and Social Care at Anglia Ruskin University, said:

 

“It was a great pleasure to welcome Joanne to Anglia Ruskin. Our students really enjoyed this engaging and informative session, and I know that they got a lot out of the session that will inform their work in practice.

“Our student nurses are the future nurse leaders and we are educating them so that they can make a positive impact on clinical practice. We have fantastic students and I know that they will use this learning opportunity to ensure that they influence the behaviour of others when it comes to the deeply serious issue of antimicrobial resistance.”