Claire Mitchell

This episode truly embodies the "Not Just Physio" spirit, as we welcome Claire Mitchell, a final year nursing student, and our guest host Dr Alexandra Carlin to discuss a recent student-led publication. Claire will share her experience of studying at UoN and the how she converted one of her essay’s into a national publication.

Claire recognised that cervical screening coverage has been declining in the UK and explored innovative strategies, such as self-sampling, to promote screening. It is hoped that Claire’s journey will inspire others to study and disseminate their work.

You can read Claire's publication here: Mitchell, C. and Carlin, A. (2025) Strategies to promote cervical screening for an aging demographic: a global insight. Practice Nursing, 36(1). https://doi.org/10.12968/pnur.2025.36.1.8

Blurb goes here

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hello and welcome back to It's Not Just Physio, the podcast. This episode truly embodies the Not Just Physio spirit as we explore from a nursing perspective the a recent article by one of our students. So my name is Alexandra Carlin, and I'll be hosting this episode in place of your regular host, James. Now today, I will be talking to one of our wonderful nursing students, Claire, who recently published one of her essays in a national journal called Practice Nursing. Claire's publication explored strategies to promote cervical screening in an ageing demographic, offering a global insight Claire recognised that cervical screening coverage has been declining in the UK and explored innovative strategies such as self-sampling to promote screening. This work is crucial in addressing barriers for people accessing cervical screening. Claire will use this opportunity to share her story and experiences with the publication. Furthermore, it is hoped that Claire's journey will inspire others to study and disseminate their work. or even encourage you, if you have a cervix, to receive screening. Claire, thank you for being so willing to share your experience. Could you please introduce yourself to our listeners and tell us a little about yourself?

SPEAKER_00: 1:38

Of course. Hi, I'm Claire Mitchell. I'm a third year student here studying adult nursing. Can't believe I'm soon to be qualifying. It's absolutely flown by. I've absolutely loved my time at uni and feel quite sad that it's almost coming to an end. But yeah, I started uni in 2022, soon to be finishing, and yeah, recently had my article published in Practice Nursing, which is something I started at the end of the second year and had it published within the third year. So yeah. That's brilliant. It's an incredible

SPEAKER_01: 2:17

achievement. Thank you. Well done. Before we launch into the detail of your publication, which, as I've already mentioned, is incredibly important. Can you spare a few moments just to discuss your academic programme experiences? So firstly, what motivated you to study here on this programme at the University

SPEAKER_00: 2:38

of Nottingham? Okay, so I don't have a nursing or clinical skills clinical background at all. I have a background in HR and marketing. So something completely different. I worked for an energy company for 14 years. I took redundancy and wanted a career change. I wanted to do something that I thought would be a bit more personally fulfilling and rewarding which wasn't something that I had from my previous career. So I embarked on an access course to come to uni. I absolutely loved that. It had been 17 years since I'd been in education so I didn't know how I would be coming back into education but loved it. Nottingham is where I live. My family are here so I was never going to leave Nottingham. Nottingham University of Nottingham was my first choice. I did apply to other universities, just in case I didn't get the grades, but I was lucky to get in. Prior to actually starting, I did some summer school with the University of Nottingham Ambition Access, I think it was called, an Ambition to Nottingham course. They put me through some mock interviews to get onto the programme, which was really useful for a mature student. And then I did the Kickstart for Mature Students programme, which happened a week before I started the first year, which was great because I got to meet some of my peers before starting, which was so helpful because then the first day was just not daunting at all because I'd already met quite a lot of people on the course. So it helped with that transition. It really helped, yeah. And I always wanted to come to Nottingham. It's the most established one in the area. And, yeah, it was my dream. to come here. Excellent

SPEAKER_01: 4:26

so not the most traditional

SPEAKER_00: 4:27

ruse in terms of A levels and straight into uni. No yeah and yeah and I think I've met a lot of mature students as well on the course that have had big career changes and that's quite refreshing because it's quite daunting coming in when you've done something completely different but yeah it's been great. You've got all those wonderful transferable skills which

SPEAKER_01: 4:53

working in Hay are going to be incredibly valuable

SPEAKER_00: 4:56

yeah absolutely and I think some of my background in marketing it was a lot of written communication and that type of experience has really helped me which I don't think I would have had I probably wouldn't have been as confident if I'd have come in younger I mean I wouldn't have had the confidence to do nursing when I was younger it's something that I've found later in life and probably my previous career even though it's not linked it is linked in a way and it has given me those building blocks

SPEAKER_01: 5:27

fantastic excellent so in terms of the program then we just want to explore some of those kind of highlights for you now that you're in your final year you're nearly qualified what have been some of the most memorable experiences for you on the program so far

SPEAKER_00: 5:43

okay so when i came for the open days it was it was still kind of during covid so i didn't really get to come in and see any of the facilities here um until i came to the kickstart event the week before uni I just remember like walking into the lecture theatre thinking wow the clinical skills that I'd seen online all of the facilities here are amazing going to my first clinical skills sessions was great because I've never done anything like that before so it was great experience for me to take out into my first placement. The first placement in year one is quite late here at Nottingham I don't know if it still is but we didn't go out until May, so it was a lot of uni learning. And then the first placement was, yeah, definitely a memorable experience. But all the placements have been amazing. I've been lucky to have a really varied... They've been really varied, and, yeah, I've got so much out of them. Some of the patients that I've met, you know, will stay with me. Yeah, my friends that I've made... Um... Yeah, starting the module, thinking how am I ever going to achieve this module, getting through to then getting your grade. It's all been really memorable, yeah. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01: 7:07

And just for our listeners, those of you that are perhaps less familiar with the requirements within nurse education, you're required to do a 50-50 split of practice and nursing and that equates to 2,300 practice hours, 2,300 theoretical hours. So it's an It's an intensive programme, but you gain that incredible reward of being out in practice and gaining that rich life experience.

SPEAKER_00: 7:32

Yeah, absolutely. And I've enjoyed the times equally when I love the academic side, but I also love going out on placement and meeting the patients and putting the knowledge and skills that I've gained into practice. And over the three years, seeing my confidence grow, I read back through Pebblepad and I look at my old reflections and think, you know, I've learned so much in three years. Excellent. And these documents,

SPEAKER_01: 8:02

these assessments, they become little artefacts of your journey. So do keep hold of them. Excellent. So shall we move on to talking about your publishing experience then? So you've had this enormous success. How did you get starting with publishing as

SPEAKER_00: 8:21

an undergraduate? Okay. I mean, It's not something that I'd ever really considered before. And the article was based on assignment, which was about psychosocial factors within health promotion using a clinical experience. You marked my piece of work and asked me, would I consider... you know putting this forward for publication which is something that I hadn't considered at all but when you when I saw that comment I thought yeah I would be really interested in doing that and then we met because I had no idea about the process involved so that was a really good conversation and I think I said to you at the time that it was a really busy time and so I'd have to I wouldn't be able to start it for two or three months I think you have when you're thinking about doing work which is in addition to your course you have to think when can I actually fit this in because nursing isn't a really intense course. But there are times throughout the academic year where it is less busy. So I pick my time. And then, yeah, it was just a case of looking and choosing the publication and working out exactly what I needed to do next. Yeah. Excellent.

SPEAKER_01: 9:45

And I'm just reflecting on marking your work. And occasionally you get these moments when you're marking and you get goosebumps and marking your essay was one of those moments I thought this is brilliant this is so good you'd really anchored the discussion to the assessment brief which is important but you'd gone beyond that this was something that needed to be shared with the public with other students with health professionals as well and so thank you so much for doing exactly that and sharing your work because it's really really important so do you want to tell us a little bit more about what this first publication was about then.

SPEAKER_00: 10:27

So the original assignment was based on my experience at a GP placement within a town in the East Midlands where I was seeing patients just declining cervical screening for various reasons and The actual case that I chose to write about was a lady who had just declined it because she didn't think it was relevant to her anymore based on her age. She was over 50. She was in a long-term relationship. She just didn't see the relevance anymore. So my assignment was about it is still relevant. It is their only primary way of detecting cervical cancer. Cervical screening is declining year on year, which is something that I hadn't realised until I started research they're only 74% of women aged 50 to 64 attend screening so there's massive work still to be done because this group haven't been able to benefit from the vaccination programme so anyone born before 1990 was ineligible for the vaccination because it hadn't yet been developed and rolled out so for this group it is their primary prevention measure so to see patients coming in and just declining it was quite an eye opener for me so the article was rewritten from the assignment that was based on that case study and it was all about how to promote cervical screening to an ageing demographic NHS England have a target to eradicate cervical cancer by 2040 but there's still a massive way to go to reach that target.

SPEAKER_01: 12:23

So just to clarify for our listeners then, I think we just need to explain what HPV is. HPV stands for human papillomavirus and it's essentially a group of viruses that will potentially live in your body and naturally your immune system should be able to fight off any infection. infection. However, we do recognise that HPV contamination increases your risk of cervical cancer. So this is an important consideration because if we've got a group, a demographic that haven't been screened or haven't received the vaccine, then they are at potentially risk of cervical cancer.

SPEAKER_00: 13:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 13:11

So let's return then to why you feel that this topic area is incredibly important.

SPEAKER_00: 13:21

I think we're going to see a shift in the peak age of diagnosis from where it is at the moment. I think it's in the late 20s to being within this older demographic. And I think it's so important because nurses out there have the knowledge and the expertise to be able to provide the advice to patients. So to keep raising this issue is crucial to improving that awareness. The lady in this instance thought it was not relevant to her anymore. It is still relevant and to be able to then give that evidence behind why it's relevant is crucial to capturing this age group and making sure that they are protected as well as they can. I think 99.8% of all cervical cancer is caused by HPV. In terms

SPEAKER_01: 14:19

of the strategies that you found from the evidence then to promote cervical screening what can you

SPEAKER_00: 14:26

offer in terms of this article? I think an interesting option that's going to be coming at some point and there is no information yet from NHS England as to when it will be rolled out but self sampling is something that will be coming in the future which could offer patients a way around some of the barriers that people face while they don't want to come into a surgery and have a screen with the traditional route. Barriers like embarrassment or fear of pain, if you could do it in your home environment, that's more under your control. I think some of the research suggests that 71% of people who didn't attend would use self-sampling, so it's looking really promising. It's actually been rolled out in other countries so it will be coming at some point but it's a really interesting approach for the future of screening. Super,

SPEAKER_01: 15:32

so let's talk through some of the kind of nuts and bolts in terms of getting this work published. So can you walk us through the process of getting your work published?

SPEAKER_00: 15:41

Yes, so firstly you've got to identify an area that's of interest to you and my experience is obviously based on the assignment but um you could choose something that was completely unrelated um to anything you've done before but it does need to be relevant and it needs to be timely um so yeah i just started um researching um more i had the i had the kind of the backbone i guess um i had the stats and i had the message that i wanted to get across but what i had written was very different to what what needed to be written um so what i did was i chose the publication that I was going to target, which was practice nursing. I had a look through a number of their articles and I liked the style of the writing and I thought that that was something that I could achieve. I looked at their guidelines to understand what I needed to do for the submission, formatting requirements, word limits, referencing styles. These were all quite different to what I'm used to here. They don't follow the Harvard referencing style, for example, they have their different style. So it's making sure that it's something that you think you can achieve. So yeah, so I really had to start from scratch with my assignment and kind of almost like rip it to pieces, change where it started and end, change all of it really. But I think that's something you have to be prepared to do because something that you might have written previously would need to be completely rewritten to meet the requirements of whichever publication you choose. So that took me a few weeks to do, really. And then I got to the stage where I sent it to you, Alex, to have a read. You added in some really good bits that I hadn't thought about. And then we finally got to the point where it was ready to be submitted. And then it's a waiting game, really, isn't it? And you just have to be patient because you don't know how long it's going to take for them to review. And then when they do come back, Alex had let me know that, you know, be prepared for that. any feedback that they might come and it might it could be rejected at that stage and you need to have a big rework so don't be disheartened and put off if it's the case that they come back and say that you need to look at this this and this and yeah so I think it's having that in your mind that the first piece that you submit might not be the final piece and there might then need to be reworked down the line but just try and move forward to get the article published.

SPEAKER_01: 18:35

But yours was actually accepted very early on. It was. It happened very quickly.

SPEAKER_00: 18:41

Yeah. And I think it took kind of from submission to being published was about two months.

SPEAKER_01: 18:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 18:49

I submitted it and then uni picked up again and I didn't really think too much about it. And then I was really surprised and just when it came back with very minimal changes. So, yeah. It's a fantastic piece of work, Claire. Thank you. Okay. So, did you come across any hurdles? Yeah. The hurdles was that I had to start from scratch with my article and I had to change the writing style from an academic style to more of a conversational style, I guess. Yeah. Readers don't want to read you know the academic university way of writing so that was a challenge for me because I've spent the last at that point two years writing in one style so I had to really try and retrain my brain I guess to write in a different style but I'd read through quite a number of their the articles on their website that have been published and that gave me a really good understanding I guess of what I needed to do to change my article and yeah it flowed a lot better.

SPEAKER_01: 20:10

Excellent. Really good helpful top tip there in terms of having a look at other articles that that particular journal has published so that you can get a feel for the tone because each academic article or nursing journal or publishing group within those journals will have their own stylistic elements to consider and for your journal it's predominantly focusing towards nurses in the practice nursing community but actually it has a broader remit as well.

SPEAKER_00: 20:47

Yeah and I think I had that in mind that who would be reading this and it is aimed at practice nurses so I thought about the practice nurses that I worked with in the placement I how would they want to read this information but also it could be picked up by patients in the waiting room or you know you've got to kind of style it out to um people who have knowledge but also people that don't have too much knowledge um to make sure that everyone once they've read it has an understanding of what you've tried to achieve fantastic

SPEAKER_01: 21:20

excellent so um you've already mentioned a little bit there around getting a little bit of support um with the publication, which I think is a helpful tip. Did you use any other resources in the publishing process at all?

SPEAKER_00: 21:40

The only real resource that I used, I guess, was their publishing guidelines, which were key to knowing how to structure the piece of work. Otherwise, I would be submitting something that wouldn't get through their screening process. I needed to make sure that it had an abstract, an introduction, that there was a certain amount of paragraphs, that the paragraphs all had relevant headers, a conclusion, that I'd thought about the keywords for when the article might be being searched for, and also then some reflective questions at the end for people to think about as part of if they wanted to use it for any further research. education for the continual professional development. Excellent, because other

SPEAKER_01: 22:30

nurses may be able to read this article, reflect on those points, and use that as evidence of revalidation, which is something we need to continuously do. Fantastic. So how has this experience, publishing as an undergraduate, impacted your academic and professional goals? What's next?

SPEAKER_00: 22:53

So I've been applying for roles for when I finish and being able to put this on my CV or the application process has been key really. A lot of the roles that I've been looking at have required you to evidence your written communication. So this has been key. great to put that on there and talk about the process and during interviews I use this as an example to help to help just bring out my written communication because it's something that I think if you can go through with this it might stand you out over other applicants and also professionally what's next I definitely want to do more writing I've realized since coming to uni and and going through with this article is that I absolutely love writing and it's something that I'm really going to miss when I start work I don't think naturally you do a lot of writing as part of work sometimes so I think that will be in the back of my mind that I want to do more and I will wherever I end up I'm going to find a new area to talk about that interests me it might be a bit like this one where I know that there's more needs to be done and there isn't often a lot of research so just if i and also if i find something that i don't understand myself i will just start to have a research about it and i think then that can kind of have a snowball effect on things that you're interested in and yeah fantastic because the

SPEAKER_01: 24:32

beauty of nursing is every day you will come across you know those critical questions of you know why why do we yes you know wear gloves when we're setting up an ivy yeah you know is it the most sustainable thing we could do could we not wear gloves or is it about infection control and so then you can launch into well let's have a look at what the evidence says and then build an article out of that and you're constantly contributing to that body of knowledge

SPEAKER_00: 25:00

I think yeah I think that's right and I think from from writing this article I found that there was some knowledge but not a massive amount of knowledge um as to why people of this age group don't want to go through with screening i wanted to use this as part of my dissertation um and i couldn't find enough evidence um so there's definitely more to be written on this this topic i did do something um associated with cervical screening but um not for the aging demographic because i just couldn't find um enough information to for me to be able to to write the literature review um so yeah I think there are there are loads of topics out there where there just isn't enough accessible information for people so if you find something that you're interested in and you can't find enough information you know have a go at writing something yourself using what there is just to kind of shape shape more more content Claire there's a PhD in there somewhere

SPEAKER_01: 25:59

so maybe in the future maybe maybe you could continue with your studies it may inform you know how We're screening people as well because I am mindful of the current criteria. It's five through five years for over 50. This could inform policy. Fantastic. Okay, so moving on then, what advice would you give to other students who are interested in publishing their work?

SPEAKER_00: 26:30

I think just... go for it if you're interested in a topic that's relevant and timely and you think that you can find enough information to be able to build an article then you've really got nothing to lose speak to your lecturers the academic staff here for support there's loads of support on hand don't be put off if you're writing an article you submit it and it comes back and there needs to be some changes. Don't be put off if you submit it to a publication that you had in mind and they don't want to take it forward. There are more options out there. There are publications that may be the one for you. So don't be disheartened by feedback. Use it to work on your writing style because I think if you can achieve... having something published at undergraduate level, it's so good to put on your CV for job applications and future career prospects.

SPEAKER_01: 27:38

Fantastic. Some really good advice there. And actually, it also aids you when you see those reviewers' comments. It does build your resilience. It does. It does. But it refines your writing. Yes. So you can go back and perhaps go back to that journal, try a different journal. Sometimes if a paper is rejected, they'll say, well, this isn't for us, but we can offer this other suite of journals. So, yeah, don't be disheartened. So you mentioned earlier you're a mature student. It sounds like you've got lots of competing priorities. So have you got any tips on balancing that academic workload with those publishing efforts? Yes,

SPEAKER_00: 28:20

yeah. So something that I didn't do in the first year, but I have done for the second and third year, is that I got a wall planner at the start of every year, which seems really basic, but it really helped us. I have two small children at primary school, So balancing home life, uni life and any other commitments is you have to be really organised. So I'll look at the beginning of each academic year, see when the deadlines are, kind of think how long realistically do I need for that revision or for that to work on that assignment, build that into the year, look when any holidays are, look when placements are because there is an expectation on the nursing course that you might be on a placement working full time but also there are deadlines as well so you've got to be super organised. I knew if there was anything over and above my course that it would only be, there's only certain times in the year when I can fit it in so when you contacted me about working on this piece I knew that I would love to do it but I couldn't have done it for another two months and there was a small window of opportunity for about three weeks that I had when my kids have gone back to school and uni was starting for the third year that I had that that time and so I think it's managing expectations if you're working on with a piece with someone and just not over doing it there's no way that I could have done this at certain points in the course because it would have just been too much and I would have spread myself too thinly so looking and planning at the beginning of the year when do you I think you might have time to fit something in if you want to achieve something that's over and above your normal academic work. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01: 30:18

Okay, so... How has your academic journey and publishing experience contributed to your own personal growth

SPEAKER_00: 30:27

then? I've become a lot more confident in my writing ability. I've always enjoyed writing but it's not something that I was totally confident in and I think as the three years have gone on I've recognised that it is something that I am quite good at but I never really believed in myself so this has really helped me to believe in myself that my writing ability is good and writing takes me a long time to do and I said that to you when we looked at doing this that I love writing but it does take me I'm not someone that can just sit there and write something and it'll be the finished piece it takes me a long time and that is something that I'm getting quicker as I'm The more I do, the quicker I get. But yeah, it's really helped just believe in myself and my writing ability.

SPEAKER_01: 31:30

It's very much an iterative process. It is. You write, you edit, you write, you edit. You keep refining it as you go. And then the end outcome is high quality work. But you're working in a really creative space. And I sometimes think, you know, I'm thinking of myself as a student previously. I think, oh, goodness you focus on the end product yes and actually there's a process that you've got to go through to get to that yeah product yeah um you know and your assessments if you're currently studying um on a program your assessments are an opportunity for that preliminary work um but then actually it might need iteration after iteration refining before you get to a potential publication yeah

SPEAKER_00: 32:16

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 32:17

okay so thank you so finally you know have you got some key takeaways from your experience

SPEAKER_00: 32:25

I have so I would just say take all the opportunities that are on offer to you if you get approached about something or if you think that you're capable of publishing an article then absolutely go for it take the time to plan when you think you might be able to fit this into your academic year because you need to be able to dedicate time to it and there are times during the academic year when you know the work is lighter so could it be that you could do something during those times don't be disheartened if something doesn't work first time the feedback that you get if you know if it's not something that you're expecting you know take time to reflect and think about how you might be able to improve it speak to some of your peers you know the support that's available and yeah my main tip is enjoy uni because it just goes so fast it doesn't feel like you know five minutes since I was starting the first year and I'm almost at the finish line now so yeah really take everything that's on offer because before you know it the three years are

SPEAKER_01: 33:35

up oh goodness well done Claire it's a considerable achievement and for our listeners if you do want to access the article you can look in a search engine if you just type in strategies to promote cervical screening for an ageing demographic a global insight you'll be able to find it and it's published in practice nursing and the date of publication is 2025 so thank you so much for sharing your experience and agreeing to be interviewed today I hope your stories and your experience here encourage others to consider studying at the University of Nottingham or publishing their work to contribute valuable insights into a global body of knowledge. Claire, I am confident that you will become a brilliant nurse and an asset to the profession. And you will help thousands of people in the future. I am very confident of that, if you're not helping them already, of course. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks very much, Alex. Oh,