Becoming a nursing associate

A nursing associate is a new member of the nursing team who will provide care and support for patients and service users.

The nursing associate role is regulated in England only.

We became the legal regulator for nursing associates in July 2018.

Where to find training programmes

If you’re interested in becoming a nursing associate and you’re currently employed as a health or care professional, you can ask your employer for advice on the options available to you.

After 26 July 2019, you can only begin training on a NMC-approved nursing associate programme.

We’ll be updating our list of approved programmes to include nursing associate programmes as we approve them.

You can also find out more about becoming an apprentice.

Progression to nursing qualifications

The government wants to see nursing associate qualifications help people with the desire and ability to become a registered nurse.

We’ve designed our standards in a way that makes it easy for education providers to develop programmes that will build on nursing associate proficiencies.

These programmes will need to enable students to develop a specialty in a field of nursing.

Applicants from outside England

The nursing associate role is regulated in England only.

As a result, we can only approve nursing associate education programmes in England.

If you’ve undertaken education and training in other countries (including the other parts of the UK) that you think is relevant to the role of the nursing associate, you will be able to:

• apply for a pre-registration nursing associate programme in England and seek recognition of your prior learning, or
• apply to join the register through our process for applicants from the devolved administrations (Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), the EU or outside the EU.

Find out more about registering as a nursing associate.

Related resources

Read the blog by Sue West, our Senior Nursing Education Advisor.