Student nurse attrition is an ongoing and increasingly pressing issue in the UK. The average attrition rate, which varies significantly from university to university is 25%, meaning 1 in 4 nursing students will drop out (Nursing Standard, 2020).
Recent data from the University and College Admissions Service (UCAS) shows a record rise in nursing student admissions in 2020, of over 23%. At a time when more nurses are needed than ever before, this is good news. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit nursing students hard. Increased anxiety around working in the field and the move to remote learning presents a heightened risk to progression and the need for increased support, challenges universities traditional methods of student support.
At a time when more nurses are needed than ever before, the COVID19 pandemic presents a heightened risk to progression. Due to this, we wanted to investigate whether the StREAM student engagement platform could be effective in identifying student nurses ‘at-risk’ of early withdrawal with the view to reducing nurse attrition in higher education. You can read about the use of engagement data to identify nursing students ‘at risk’ of withdrawal in our case study below.
