Streamlining educational provision for cardiovascular nurses: A beginning not an end

Nurses represent the largest sector of the healthcare workforce with about six million of us in the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region alone, but although this workforce is significant, it is not predicted to be sufficient to meet future healthcare needs.1 The profession of nursing faces several important challenges around its workforce which are also relevant to cardiovascular care settings. First, how can we attract new recruits to the nursing profession? Second, how can we streamline the provision of nurse education across our region? Third, how can we provide colleagues with opportunities for continuing professional development (CPD) to support lifelong learning and enable nurses to work to their full potential? Access to graduate level and continuing education has something to offer in all of these scenarios and is the way forward to strengthen the identity of the nursing profession. Our aspiration is to work towards raising awareness about the importance of nurse education and we hope that in the future all nurses in Europe will have access to graduate level education and ongoing CPD. The Declaration of Bologna emphasised the need for a unified programme of nursing education in Europe.2 The Tuning project addressed implementation of the Bologna process3 and the amended Directive 2013/55/EU on the recognition of professional qualifications, presented by the European Commission, underlined the need to harmonise the minimum training requirements for general nurses.4 Given that the nature of the content covered in existing post-registration CPD programmes for nurses working in cardiovascular settings is less clear,5 we envisage that it will take years for the streamlining of nurse education, both the initial preparation and ongoing CPD, to occur. Furthermore the verification of nurses engagement with CPD to support ongoing fitness to practice during their professionallifespan warrants attention. Current approaches appearto be inconsistent. Our view is that CPD should not bean optional extra but a necessity particularly given the associations identified between nurse education and patient mortality rates.6 The WHO and the International Council of Nurses both recognize CPD as a priority for all healthcare professionals.7 In fact CPD provides a promising conduit for the translation of evidence into practice, to bridge the theory practice gap, and modernise daily practice. The stronger integration and alignment of education with clinical practice and research has the potential to foster the evolution of nursing as a science and promote the provision of high quality care for cardiovascular patients.8 In this issue of the European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, the Education Committee of the Council of Cardiovascular Nurses and Allied Professions (CCNAP) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) present the core curriculum for nurses working in cardiovascular settings in Europe. This document is the result of a comprehensive consultation process with input from all key ESC stakeholders such as the CCNAP Board, the ESC Education Committee and the CCNAP National Committee. Input was also sought from service users, cardiologists, nurses, academics, researchers and educators. The diversity of the CCNAP Education Committee, which represented many European countries, represented a strength. A sincere effort has been made to create a document that can be flexibly implemented by relevant professional organisations, universities, ministries of health, technical colleges, hospitals, teachers, researchers and the learners themselves. The core curriculum is not designed to replace current modules or curricula already in use but can inform the future validation and update of educational programmes and their curricula. The content can function as both a ‘map’, which identifies important themes that should be included in nurse education, and also a tool that provides an educational ‘bridge’ between initial preparation and advanced specialist practice. Our view was that change needed to come from the ‘grass roots’ to be successfulso we have avoided being overly prescriptive in our document, but have aimed to identify key areas that we believe characterise person and family centred nursing practice in cardiovascular settings. The curriculum can be tailored for use by each country according to its own specific needs and priorities together with the legislative and regulatory standards that govern safe nursing practice. In this way, we hope that the profession of nursing, in cardiovascular care settings, can overcome some of the challenges that occur as a result of working across geographical and organizational barriers. The curriculum is far from perfect, but readers are asked to understand that it represents the beginning, rather than the end, of a long process that we hope will take us a step closer to our goal of streamlining cardiovascular nurse education in Europe. The authors would like to acknowledge and thank all those who contributed to the development of the curriculum.