Students in the Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care (NMPC) faculty are exactly the kind of leaders who should be running their students’ union – every day, they're standing up for patients, juggling demanding placement hours with their studies, and speaking up when care could be better. These instincts of advocacy, leadership, and a commitment to social improvement are precisely what we're looking for in a Student Officer.
Yet in almost a decade of elections, only one nursing student has served as an Officer Trustee, meaning this wealth of experience has been missing from the decisions that shape student life, placement support, and academic policy for an entire era at King’s. For a cohort as large, skilled and community‑minded as NMPC, this gap is too big to ignore, which is why this year, the KCLSU Student Voice team have dedicated their efforts to encouraging their voices to be heard. This is not an easy task, however.
NMPC students face real structural barriers to community involvement: shift‑based placements that can change weekly, work-related and emotional fatigue, long-distance commutes, family responsibilities, all on top of being largely separate from KCLSU’s main stronghold on the Strand. It's understandable that running in an election can feel like something “other” students do, those with more time on their hands. But these same realities that bar NMPC students from participation are exactly why their voices are needed at the table when the SU negotiates on timetabling, assessment, wellbeing, and practice learning with the university and placement partners.
Officer roles are not about party politics; they're about care, representation and ensuring all of our peers feel supported – things NMPC students already do in clinical settings. If elected, Officers from this faculty could champion issues like safe workloads, inclusive learning environments, snuffing out discriminatory treatment on placements, and developing better communication between faculties, services and students. These are campaigns we're already trying to make headway with, both at the SU and in the wider King’s community, but having an NMPC student at the vanguard of these campaigns could really catalyse their momentum.
Because NMPC students’ time is limited, KCLSU and the faculty designed nomination support to be as low‑friction as possible: we scheduled short online conversations to talk through the role, shift‑friendly drop‑ins, a one‑page nomination guide, and individual follow‑ups for anyone who is interested but unsure. Our potential candidates do not need to see themselves as “a typical student politician”; in fact, we stressed that the best leaders were those who didn't always necessarily put themselves forward first. This point was crucial in enticing those who haven't had time to take on any other student leadership roles through societies or SSLC because of time constraints.
However, if a student was an academic representative, or heavily involved in the Nightingale Student Council or Nightingale Society, this was a great starting point for our efforts – these were students who often found themselves supporting others, noticing things that “should be better”. This opportunity was simply their invitation to the power to do more. Overall, I think our support system was crucial in facilitating these nominations, and I hope that we can end the decade-long lack of NMPC representation in Student Officership – these students already transform lives in the clinic; it's time they are allowed to transform lives at King’s too.
Ready to make a change?
~ Piers, Student Community Organiser