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Turas Indexing

Overview

Universities providing nursing and midwifery education that leads to registration or recording with the Nursing and Midwifery Council supply data to NES whenever a student starts, discontinues or completes their course. This includes pre-registration students and registered nurses and midwives undertaking post-registration qualifications.

These data were previously stored in a database known as the Computerised Training Index (CTI). In 2023 this was replaced by a new system, Turas Indexing.

NES supports the registration process for newly-qualified nurses and midwives in Scotland by transferring data from Turas Indexing to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). NES assumed responsibility for this function at its creation in 2002, taking over from the National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting for Scotland.

Administrative staff in the Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions directorate (NMAHP) within NES receive data on student completions and commencements throughout the first months of each academic year. Data uploaded into Turas Indexing by universities using standard spreadsheet templates. Turas Indexing has data quality checks built into it, with checks for potential duplicated records and missing or incomplete data. Aggregate data on student intakes are reported back to universities to ensure that NES' records agree with the source organisations'. Updates to data, for example, student name changes or notices of discontinuation, can be received at any point throughout the year.

What data are published

NES release student nurse and midwife intake, in-training, and progression statistics in December each year as part of the NHSScotland Workforce official statistics publication.

Trainee data are extracted from Turas Indexing in October each year and statistics calculated for:

  • Intake: number of students commencing a course.
  • Number in training: total number of students known to be actively in training on 31st October in each year of the reporting period.
  • Progression: percentage of each student cohort (on three-year degree courses) in each of the following mutually exclusive states: active (if they are in training), inactive (if they are not training and have not completed their course), or complete (if they have completed their training).

More information is available on the above methods.

Background

Students can undertake a variety of pre-registration course types across four fields of nursing (Adult, Mental Health, Learning Disabilities, and Children’s) and Midwifery. Some universities currently offer dual-registration awards in more than one field of nursing practice.

Post-registration courses include Specialist Nursing Practice, Specialist Community Nursing Practice, Health Visitors, and District Nurses.

For the progression statistics, students are allocated to a cohort which corresponds to the year and course associated with their first episode of pre-registration education.

Further information

Intake targets are published by the Scottish Funding Council and measured in full-time equivalents. Cohort sizes are calculated from NES data and measured in headcounts.