Education & Skills 
Policy Connect, alongside the Higher Education Commission and the All-Party Parliamentary Health Group (APHG), recently launched Trained for Tomorrow, a report exploring the challenges facing the healthcare education pipeline. As part of the inquiry, we spoke to healthcare students across the country about their training and their hopes for what comes next. One of them was Devan Chauhan, then in his final year of Children’s Nursing at the University of Greenwich, who gave evidence at our Greenwich session and later joined the panel at our launch event. In July, I spoke with him about his path into nursing, what the inquiry meant to him, and where he thinks healthcare training policy needs to go next.
Knowing what’s out there and getting in
Devan’s route into nursing began with volunteering, providing first aid cover at St John events from an early age and building clinical exposure most young people never get near. He grew up in a family of healthcare professionals too, though he wanted to reach his own decision rather than follow a path already mapped out.
Not every student gets that exposure, he said. His own school focussed almost entirely on medicine, leaving little room to hear about other healthcare careers, and he does not think much has changed. It’s a gap we heard about repeatedly, and part of why we recommended a sustained, multi-year national careers campaign covering the full breadth of healthcare roles rather than defaulting to nursing and medicine. The goal is to reach people before they rule healthcare out, not just to serve those already looking.
“Talking about these different careers is so important, especially for getting people into these professions. I know we lose a lot of people off the register every year, and that would be the same for most healthcare professions. So it’s important to keep the continuity of people who are interested, and show them what we actually do as professionals.”
It’s also why Devan joined the #GiveAnHour, through which healthcare professionals give up their time to run career talks, review personal statements, and hold mock interviews for applicants. Our report found this kind of support still clusters around a handful of institutions with the resources to run it formally. Devan built his from the outside in, as someone who once had to find that guidance for himself, and it does something the report only touches on, showing young people the team-based nature of healthcare from the outset.
Support through the programme
At university, Devan found a different way of learning to the one he knew at school, describing the shift from textbook answers to independent engagement with evolving evidence and research as one of the biggest adjustments of his degree, and one he came to value.
As a disabled student, he felt positively about the support he received, describing it as a working partnership rather than a formal process. But advocating for yourself takes confidence, and not understanding how a system works is itself a barrier. Our earlier evidence review found the same thing. Reasonable adjustments are not always implemented consistently, and the gap widens whenever students move, from school to university and later into practice. Devan remembers the challenge of working out who arranges a new GP and how much of his existing support will actually carry over.
Placements were where the coordination gap mattered most. Our inquiry heard that students with additional needs can struggle when adjustments are not communicated clearly between universities and placement providers, which is why we recommended that regional placement networks work directly with student support and disability services. For Devan, regular, informal check-ins with students on placement made the real difference.
“I’m able to advocate for myself, but that can be quite hard. Having that open conversation, setting a precedent that you can speak to us, and that it doesn’t necessarily have to be formal, it can be a small chat, would be a really positive step in making sure students feel supported, not just disabled students, but students in general.”
The demands outside of healthcare
For Devan, the hardest parts of his degree were rarely the clinical content. They were the practical demands of simply getting through it, the sacrifices the course asks of everyone, and classmates juggling childcare, family responsibilities, or multiple jobs to support themselves while studying. Debt was a constant presence, he said, and for some students it raises a real question of whether the degree is worth it at all.
“Healthcare is sometimes about sacrifice, but that doesn’t mean your life stops completely and everything else goes away just because you’re at work. Some students I know are working multiple jobs because they need to support their families or childcare, and on top of that, the debt is piling up, the loans and interest are climbing. That’s at the back of people’s minds: is it worth it?”
Our inquiry heard the same thing, repeatedly. Some parts of healthcare training are hard by necessity, learning to manage the body, or navigating a difficult patient interaction. But completing the degree, and being able to live your life while doing it, should not be. It’s part of why we recommended a loan repayment scheme for newly qualified NHS staff, and why placement funding decisions should be made public, so it is clear whether support reaches the students who need it most.
Prospects for the future
At the time we spoke, Devan had accepted a place to study medicine at St George’s, starting in September, applying on the strength of his nursing degree rather than the traditional school-leaver route. He was clear he will always be a nurse first, and intends to keep his registration active while he studies, believing his clinical background will shape how he practises as a doctor. It’s also the kind of route our report argues for, recognising professional experience and existing qualifications as valid ways into a healthcare degree, not treating the traditional path as the only credible one.
He had also been applying for nursing posts, and reflected on how few exist for newly qualified children’s nurses, with some hospitals having only one children’s ward. Our inquiry highlighted how financial pressures on NHS trusts have reduced the number of available positions in some professions and regions, and where posts do exist, pooled recruitment processes and narrow application windows leave little room for graduates to plan ahead. That is part of why we called for stronger regional workforce planning, to align training numbers with where graduates actually want, and are needed, to work.
Having yourself heard in policy
Devan described the oral evidence session as a rare chance for students to speak directly to the people shaping policy that will affect them for years, an experience he wants more students to have.
“I want to share my experience because I am a student, but also how many other students are in this room right now? How many people get this opportunity to share their experiences? This is the chance for students in general to have an impact on policy that could affect them for years to come.”
The recommendation that resonated most with him was our proposed National Forum. Devan has represented young people in national settings before, and has since gone on to help shape policy himself, so he knows what these forums can achieve when they are taken seriously, and how easily they collapse into box-ticking when they are not. However, he wishes to emphasise that forums only work if the people delivering care can challenge everyone above them, including whoever is leading the change.
If there is one thing he would want Parliament to take from this, it is that student experience should sit at the centre of policymaking, not the edge of it, and that the people who contribute should be able to see what changed as a result.
“If you’re struggling to understand, talk to the people. Bring students into the room and figure out what their experience is, from the source. We need senior leaders who are comfortable being challenged by students and by staff, and who are willing to have those difficult conversations.”
You can read the full Trained for Tomorrow report here, and find out more about by contacting Rhiannon Tuckett-Jones (rhiannon.tuckett-jones@policyconnect.org.uk).
Related content
