Quality assurance in UK nursing education: public protection in the era of streamlined assessment.

This paper describes recent reforms of quality assurance (QA) for the education of nurses, midwives and health visitors and reports qualitative findings from a study of how they are working out in practice. This study reported whether the stakeholders consider the system to be adequate for the principal aim of public protection. Using a postal survey and interviews, QA in nursing, midwifery and health visiting is compared and contrasted in the four countries of the United Kingdom. Issues of subjectivity versus objectivity in decision making over QA of nursing, midwifery and health visiting education and the extent to which these processes are rigorous arose. There is an inverse relationship between the number of higher education institutions in a country and the extent to which nursing, midwifery and health visiting QA personnel, responsible for conducting QA events, become involved with those institutions in offering advice and support. Generally speaking, where the changes have been greatest, satisfaction with the QA processes is lowest. Dissatisfaction was only expressed with processes and most likely arose from resistance to change but these are early days in the operation of the new QA procedures.