Apprenticeship Showcase Event and Projects

On the 10^{th of} September 2025, over 200 guests attended the annual Community Nursing Showcase event at Manchester Metropolitan University, School of Nursing and Public Health.

Including seventy eighty apprentices from across our Community Nursing Specialist (District Nursing) and Specialist Community Public Health Nurse Postgraduate Diploma apprenticeship programmes representing organisations across the Northwest. Our apprentices presented their final projects, under this year’s theme of: “Empowering Populations to Enhance Health and Wellbeing”.  During the event, each of our seventy-eight apprentices presented a poster detailing their public health interventions, displaying the outstanding public health work they have accomplished over the past year, with a select few giving face-to-face presentations.

The projects tackled a vast range of public health issues, including post bereavement support, knife awareness and social prescribing and many more. All projects saw real-world implementation in their community. Following the presentations, our apprentices and their guests had the chance to network, discuss each other’s projects in greater detail, and vote for their favourite posters.

The apprentices engaged in a year long process of empowerment and public health initiatives which were cultivated and implemented over the year and presented to a large audience of stakeholders from across the District Nursing, Health Visiting and School Nursing community. Highlighting real impact to service users and meaningful impact the apprentices have made in their communities. This year as with other years was a real opportunity to demonstrate their hard work to their peers, practice assessors and supervisors, trust managers and clinical leads, and academics.

Our Community Nursing Specialist (District Nursing) PgDip apprenticeship prepares employees for the changing face of community nursing and the needs of service users in the future. Whilst our Specialist Community Public Health Nurse PgDip apprenticeship has been designed to meet the contemporary health and wellbeing needs of individuals, communities, and populations, offering two distinct pathways for health visiting and school nursing.

These comprehensive 13-month programmes, delivered by the School of Nursing and Public Health, equip participants with the skills and knowledge required to become confident specialist nurses, capable of making a significant positive impact on the health and wellbeing of their communities. Our provision is award-winning. The University has been named Training Provider of the Year at the Northwest Apprenticeship Awards 2023, and Nurse Education Provider (Post-registration) of the Year at the Student Nursing Times Awards 2023. Our nurses have also garnered individual recognition, winning SAPHNA School Nurse Student of the Year 2023 and iHV Health Visitor Student of the Year 2023.

– Louise Derham QN, Manchester Metropolitan University

You can read some of the students’ final reports via the links below:

• Amy Milne – Small Changes, Big Impact: From Isolation to Empowerment
• Danielle Lawrence – Driving Change in Care Home Diabetes Management: A District Nurse’s Initiative
• Justine Richbell – Building Death Literacy in District Nursing
• Natalie Kirwan – Empowering Our Community through Social Prescribing in Oldham
• Nicola Blundell – Empowering Communities to Prevent Pressure Ulcers: A District Nursing Initiative in Werneth
• Nicola Coles – Empowering Carers Through Mouthcare: A Community Nursing Initiative for End-of-Life Care
• Penny Murphy – Thread Forward: Stitching Together Compassion, Community, and Sustainability
• Rhea Morgan – The Voice of the Adult: Empowerment through District Nursing
• Tara Tomassi – Empowerment project on pressure ulcer care and prevention