Nursing student Fahima Mustafe has been shortlisted for the Mary Seacole Award for outstanding contribution to diversity and inclusion. Fahima, a third-year pre-registration BSc Adult Nurse student, was nominated for the way she has bridged her professional aspirations to help others with supporting some of the most vulnerable in her local community. 

Informed by her experiences of growing up in an impoverished, single-parent family, Fahima used her own funds to help set up a local café supporting those experiencing domestic violence, insecure housing and food poverty. Alongside this, she launched an outreach service distributing cooked meals to families during school holidays. Over Christmas 2020, she raised enough to distribute 150 presents to children in families experiencing household poverty, and every day over that period the café cooked 150 meals for families who needed help feeding their children. 

Nada Essia and Ellie Bull have been shortlisted for the Nursing Associate Trainee of the Year, which recognises an outstanding final-year nursing associate trainee.

Nada was nominated for her collaborative approach to learning and supporting her fellow students to strengthen their understanding of cultural considerations in the treatment of patients. She has been a key part in contributing to new cohort induction programmes that incorporate the learner’s perspective of the Nursing Associate role. 

Ellie, an Apprentice Nursing Associate, works for a GP practice in north east London and was featured in the US Washington Post earlier in the year administering vaccines to homeless people. Ellie was nominated for her work supporting the most vulnerable members of society, particularly during the pandemic, combining her studies with her professional work in primary care. 

UEL has been shortlisted for Nursing Associate Training Programme Provider of the Year (pre-registration).

The Foundation Science (FdSc) Nursing Associate programme bridges the gap between registered nurses and healthcare workers to provide high quality, person-centred care across health and social care settings. Nursing Associates work within all aspects of nursing, supporting registered nurses in the assessment, planning, delivery and evaluation of care. Sine its launch, the number of students studying to be Nursing Associates with UEL has grown rapidly, from 60 students in 2019 to 200 in 2020. 

Dr Beverly Joshua, head of nursing for UEL, said: "UEL has been at the forefront of the Nursing Associate course and we are proud of the way our Nursing Associate students rose to the challenges of the pandemic. They have shown resilience, courage, and a deep determination to study while working. I feel incredibly proud of the nursing team who have gone beyond the call of duty in providing quality academic and pastoral support to students both at university and at our partner Trusts.

The shortlisting of these nominees is a testament to the growing success of UEL's relatively new nursing programme, which launched in January 2018 with the school’s BSc Nursing (Adult) degree. Since then, the school has added the FdSc Nursing Associate qualification and the Get Into Nursing Short course, both aimed at supporting the accessibility of nursing as a career and helping to meet government nursing targets. The school also offers apprenticeship routes for those wanting to learn on the job with UEL's NHS trust partners. 

"We are extremely proud of the way our nursing students have met pandemic-related challenges over the past year. Many were deployed into key, frontline clinical roles, with many graduating early due to the number of hours they worked in clinical practice. We have also worked very closely with our wonderful trust partners to ensure we support our nursing students through these challenging times and offer support during the pandemic.

"To be recognised by the Student Nursing Times Awards is a tremendous achievement and highlights our commitment to supporting the next generation of nursing professionals,"

Professor Jane Perry, dean of the School of Health, Sport and Bioscience at UEL, said.

The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on Thursday 4 November 2021, which will mark the awards' ten-year anniversary.

Find out more about UEL's nursing programme.