Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein)
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790. To ask the Minister for Health to recognise student nurses as essential workers during placement; provide fair financial support or pay for the hours worked to ensure that no student is forced into unsafe levels of combined work simply to survive; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [65231/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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A key Government priority is to protect and support the education of all students, including student nurses and midwives.

During years 1-3 of Undergraduate Nursing and Midwifery BSc Education Programmes, undergraduate student nurses and midwives complete clinical practice placements as supernumerary students.

Supernumerary practice placement is the optimum clinical learning environment, providing student nurses supervised placement periods of varying lengths during each year of their training. This ensures that students can safely learn, observe and participate in the wide variety of clinical skills required for qualification. These students are not employees and are additional to the workforce in a learning capacity and are therefore not paid.

The final year internship placement for student nurses and midwives consists of a continual 36-week rostered clinical placement. The internship placement is a paid placement and individual student nurses and midwives are considered as 0.5 WTE of the workforce. They are the only healthcare students who are paid a salary. This is in recognition of the fact that they work under reduced supervision which remains in place to support final learning weeks.

Clinical placement supports were examined in 2021 with a number of additional supports now in place to enhance the travel and subsistence available to student nurses during their supernumerary placements. Additional supports are also provided for students beginning their internships including the provision of additional uniforms and a uniform laundry allowance where required