Case Summaries

The provider said that the rules around placement hours are set by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (the NMC). The NMC rules say that if a student takes a long time away from their studies, some earlier placement hours cannot be carried forward. At the end of its review the provider said again that the student needed to complete another 1,300 hours because they had been away from their studies for two years.
The student remained dissatisfied and complained to us.

We upheld part of the student’s complaint (we decided it was Partly Justified). The provider had correctly applied the NMC rules, and the student was required to complete a further 1,300 placement hours. The provider was not able to change these requirements.

But the provider had not clearly explained to students how any periods of absence might affect the requirements around placement hours. The return-to-study meeting had not given the student enough information to understand the requirements. After that meeting, the provider had asked the student to write an email summarising what they had understood which the provider would then amend. This was not good practice. It was the provider’s responsibility to provide a clear note of the meeting, outlining exactly what the student needed to do to complete their qualification. The provider had also undermined the student’s faith in the fairness of the process by repeated inaccuracies when describing how long the student’s time away from study had been for different reasons.

We recommended that the provider should apologise to the student for the distress caused by a lack of clarity in its communications and pay £500 in compensation. We also suggested that the provider should add more information to the programme handbook about circumstances when some placement hours might be discounted.