Community psychiatric nurse education in the United Kingdom: 8 years of surveys and the issues raised.

Over the past 8 years annual surveys of the take-up and development of community psychiatric nursing courses within the United Kingdom have been conducted under the auspices of the Standing Advisory Group on Community Psychiatric Nurse Education (SAGCPNE). They reveal a clear link between changes in funding structure and numbers of community psychiatric nurses (CPNs) undertaking training, with recently implemented arrangements resulting in rises in student numbers. Rising numbers are not distributed evenly across course centres, with some courses showing more dramatic increases than others. As a consequence of Project 2000 and the UKCC PREP (Post-Registration Education and Practice policy), the surveys show that CPN courses have moved in many cases to diploma level and in some cases to degree level. A number of issues are raised by the changes charted by the surveys. Funding structures are set to change again within the next few years, and may have a negative impact upon CPN training. Market pressures have led to greater secrecy over curriculum content at a time when more openness could lead to shared improvements and greater uniformity of courses. In conjunction with these changes, government mental health policy has implications for CPN training. These issues are discussed and some modest recommendations made.