According to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), universities across the UK must develop and implement new preregistration nursing programmes by the end of 2020. Unlike the rest of the world, where initial nurse training is generic, preregistration education in the UK enables students to specialise in one of four fields of nursing practice: adult, child, mental health or learning disability.

The recent NMC standards of proficiency for registered nurses confirmed the continuation of these specialist fields at undergraduate level. Considering these recent standards, nurse educators across the UK have an opportunity to review their existing educational provision.

This article explores three issues facing nurse educators as they prepare new mental health nursing courses: how to respond to adverse life experiences or trauma; how to address the ethical tensions inherent in the use of coercive practices; and how to make a difference to people’s physical health and to mortality statistics, which indicate that people with longstanding mental health issues die at a much younger age than their contemporaries. These areas need to be systematically addressed across mental health preregistration nursing programmes to improve the lives of service users and determine the future of the specialty.