A review of evidence for the practice learning environment: Enhancing the context for nursing and midwifery care in Scotland

This paper considers the issues which will ensure practice learning excellence in the future and in particular how these will impact on the delivery of high quality nursing and midwifery care in Scotland in the United Kingdom (UK). This will include the inter-dependency of learning in practice for undergraduate pre-registration students and qualified practitioners, in particular continuing professional development as a lifelong experience and its link to quality care provision. We contend that the practice learning environment is the whole of an organisation which values and supports the development of its workforce through education. Partnership working between education and service providers is central to ensuring an educated and professionally prepared workforce. Both nursing and midwifery are practice-based professions which are accountable for, and charged with assuring, effective public health and safety. The initial paper which established the key issues discussed here was initially written as one of the key background papers for a consensus conference to inform NHS Education for Scotland’s nursing and midwifery workforce development over the next five years (NES 2009).