Nurse whistleblowing is a thorny topic. International literature (McDonald and Ahern 2000 Firtko and Jackson 2005 Zhang et al. 2009 Schlesinger 2010 Jackson et al. 2014) agrees that whilst whistleblowing is an integral aspect of nursing practice it is associated with negative connotations derived from the well documented detrimental personal and professional consequences. This picture was indicative of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) prior to 2013. The acceptance of the Francis report (2013) recommendations has been pivotal in transforming the views around nurse whistleblowing through the evolution of a harm prevention culture new professional guidance and a renaming to raising concern. As part of this transformation (NHS. 2016 Berwick 2013 Nursing and Midwifery Council. 2013 Nursing and Midwifery Council. 2015) nursing students have been actively encouraged to speak out take action and raise concerns to their mentor or placement manager sharing in the NHS and professional campaigns to protect patients.
NMC (2013; 2015) advice presented a new system for raising concerns shifting students’ whistleblowing into placements. Placements are integral to nurse education with reviews (Urwin et al. 2010 Brown et al. 2011 Thomas et al. 2012) indicating that they can have a negative stressful influence on students leading to attrition and dissatisfaction. This coupled with the negative views expressed by nurse whistleblowers painted a picture that nursing students would find raising concern difficult and stressful with some individuals being fearful and unwilling to speak out. However small scale UK studies (Bellefontaine 2009 Ion et al. 2015) suggested that nursing students’ felt able to whistleblow with University support. The change of NHS culture and process for raising concerns as well as the expectation that students’ will speak out whilst in placement presented a new era of student involvement within patient care. As a nurse educator I have an interest in both patient care and nursing students’ placement experiences which has led to this study. There remains little published research looking specifically at nursing students’ experience of raising concern which this study sought to address.
