Guest editor role for Millie Holley at the Nursing Times

It’s not every day that a colleague at the trust gets invited to pen a regular column for a national media outlet...but that’s just what’s happened to Millie Holley, one of our students nurses in our intensive dementia service west.

As an avid reader of the leading publication for nursing colleagues – the Nursing Times – Millie spotted an advert seeking expert contributions from students.

Millie went to school in Taunton, before going onto a sixth form college, where she studied social care for a year during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I felt that my time in college was a bit too much like school,” she says. “I therefore didn’t stay and instead transferred over to Bridgwater and Taunton College, where I did the more hands-on T Level course – and I loved every minute of it!

“We went on some really cool trips, including the USA for a couple of weeks, as well as Italy, where we worked in a care home.

“My time in America was more about learning about the way they do things and visiting museums and things like that, whereas Italy gave me a lot more hands-on care experience.

“I then began a student nursing associate placement last September within our intensive dementia service, where I started to go out and see patients under supervision from my colleagues.

“I’m progressing really well and I’m now able to go out and have conversations with patients and their family members who support them.

“In fact, on the morning of the interview for this article, we’ve just had our daily multidisciplinary meeting, and I’ll relay much of what we talk about to the patients’ families to keep them more involved.

“I’m hoping to qualify later in 2025 as a nursing associate, and then starting on the registered nurse programme a year or so later.”

Millie says she often uses the Nursing Times to help with the referencing on her assignments, as there’s so much content written by peers and experts.

“One day when I was on the website looking for articles to use as references, up popped a text box asking whether I’d like to keep in the loop.

“I signed up and a few days later I got an email with their newest articles, and one of them was asking for people to sign up as a student editor for the Nursing Times, so I thought, ‘why not?!'

“They told me that it was a selective process, but a few months went by and I hadn’t heard back from them, so I just assumed that I wasn’t going to get it and forgot all about it.

“But I was sat at home one day and had a phone call where they told me I got it! It took me completely by surprise, as I was only saying to my mum a few days before that I didn’t think I’d got it.

“I didn’t realise how widely the Nursing Times was read, as although me and my peers used it for our studies, people clearly take the matters discussed really seriously, at all levels of nursing, and even beyond our profession.

“I’m quite keen on writing about the apprenticeship route into nursing, mainly because I don’t feel that it’s widely known about and I think there’s a bit of a stigma around apprenticeships, which is a bit of a shame as they are such fantastic routes into nursing and healthcare.

“In fact, apprenticeships are equal in the content that we learn, and although I may be biased, I feel that we actually get a bit more experience as we’re permanently at work doing hands-on care, whereas when studying for a normal degree, you tend to do either one or the other.

“I feel that it better prepares you for the time you qualify, and I’m certainly planning on staying here as it’s somewhere that I really enjoy working.

“I’m extremely excited by the challenge of being a student editor, and of course very nervous at the same time! I didn’t realise that so many people read the publication, and it’s such a nice feeling that people might read my articles.

“It’s also a bit nerve wracking as I want to represent the trust and the university as best I can, and just make sure that I give them a well-rounded point of view of everything.

“Things aren’t all great, but they’re also not all bad, so I just want to shed some light on the tricky bits and the really good bits of nursing.”

You can read Millie’s first blog post for the Nursing Times here: 'When I chose to do an apprenticeship, it was one of the easiest decisions I had ever made' | Nursing Times.

Hot off the press…

As this article was published, Millie has just found out that she has been shortlisted by the Nursing Times for Student Nurse Associate of the Year!