Three issues for mental health nurse educators preparing new preregistration programmes

Universities across the UK must develop and have in place new preregistration programmes by 2020. Unlike in the rest of the world, where initial nurse preparation is generic, preregistration education in the UK allows students to specialize in one of four specific fields of practice - adult, mental health, child or learning disability. To the relief of many , the new standards confirmed the continued survival of the specialist fields at undergraduate level. Educators across the UK now have an opportunity to fully review existing provision and address areas of significance. This paper explores three such issues. These are:

•How best to respond to adverse life experiences or trauma.
•The ethical tension which we believe is inherent in the use of coercive practice.
•The potential to make a difference to the appalling mortality statistics which indicate that people with long standing mental health problems die much younger than their contemporaries

In each case we make tentative suggestions for how they might be approached.