Your time to return -- Preparation -- Bridging the gap -- Practice placement -- Reflective Practice -- Taking care of yourself -- Returning to study -- Re-entering the workforce.

"Welcome to Returning to Nursing Practice: Confidence and Competence. This book is intended as a guide for those contemplating or undertaking a return to their practice role. If you are thinking about going back to your profession after time away, we know that you may also be apprehensive. There may be a sense of lost skills and knowledge, a practice gap that is too wide or a fear that you will not be able to cope with today's working pressures. These are entirely understandable feelings shared by nurses, teachers, social workers, and many others. Professional roles such as these are both fulfilling and demanding, carrying at their core ethical responsibilities and a commitment to give to others. There are skills to refresh, knowledge to renew and an identity to reclaim. This is a journey back to confidence and competence. Over twenty years of involvement in supporting returning nurses and health visitors has afforded us insights into what it is like to travel this path. We hope here to both inform and reassure by sharing with you what we have learnt. Our approach is largely generic across all nursing fields because we wanted to highlight the fact that by far the most significant aspect of returning to professional practice is that it is a shared experience. In some areas our discussions may lean more towards one field than another and, at this point, we must note that we have made only brief mention of midwifery; however, again, as so much of returning to the healthcare professions embraces common ground, we hope returning midwives will find something of value here to take away. Our intention has been to be as inclusive as possible, drawing on and representing examples from across the range of practice specialties. We have included points of academic reference whilst also aiming to sustain a light flow of reading. We wanted above all to communicate usefully, creating a book which feels friendly and informative. One of the challenges for us has been to find a balance between these two settings, and we hope that this has been achieved. You will find published sources and web links for further reading listed at the end of each chapter. We have endeavoured to be consistent in our terminology, but we are also conscious that returning nurses will have varying orientations to different frames of reference depending on when they were last in practice. As mature nurses we are most comfortable with the term "patient" to refer to individuals who receive care, and so this is what you will see most often in the text. However, occasionally we have also used "service user" and "client." There are now a range of routes to choose from when considering a return to nursing. We have outlined these in one of the early chapters. However, our focus is the Return to Practice course because this remains the most popular choice for returning nurses. We believe the reason for this is that students gain invaluably from the support of others embarking on the same journey. Every cohort becomes a small community of fellow travellers who help each other along the way - encouraging, informing, giving each other lifts and often forming solid friendships. They are a courageous, kind and resilient band of individuals and this book pays tribute to their endeavours. The book is organised into eight chapters. We begin with a short opening chapter which addresses the personal decision making involved in a return to nursing. We also consider what nursing identity might mean to us all and set the scene for the start of your journey back to the profession"--