Essence of care involving nursing students

In 2001 the Department of Health published The Essence of Care, which aims to improve patient care by identifying and measuring good practice benchmarks. Educators and trainers need to integrate such initiatives into course curricula and develop innovative approaches to enable the contribution of nursing students. This paper describes the initial phase of collaborative work between the University of Southampton's School of Nursing and Midwifery and the local NHS trust which was designed to achieve these aims, including the development of a good practice evaluation tool which students complete at the end of their clinical placements.