Nurses’ access to higher education: a quality product

Responding to government initiatives which demand that quality in education be identified in a measurable way, nursing, in its move to professionalization, has sought to gain academic parity with other professions allied to medicine and has entered higher education (HE) institutions. In setting up new courses, it is now necessary to work within an identified model of quality and use it as the basis for evaluation. Describes how the authors set up an access module for nurses who had never studied within HE but had come from a traditional “training” background. In the early planning stage it became evident that no established framework for quality was suitable for this module. As a result, a model was designed based on the work of several authors (Donabedian, 1966; Holzemer, 1992 and Maxwell, 1984). The major categories within this model were identified as context, process and outcome. These were chosen from the literature as they reflect key concepts in nursing practice familiar to all nursing practitioners. Within each category, several sub‐components were later identified. Having used this model to plan, implement and evaluate several modules over a two‐year period, it appears to be a useful tool in recognizing and measuring appropriate quality issues for access courses for nursing. Although it was constructed specifically for this purpose, it could be of use in a wider education arena for mature students returning to study.