Post by Deborah Udy Okusaga Akanne (@deborah_udy_okusaga)

Six words. And most nurses walking into an NHS interview can only name four of them without hesitating.

That hesitation costs more than it looks like it should.

The 6 Cs of Nursing weren't invented for interview panels. They came out of NHS England's Compassion in Practice strategy in 2012, and they now sit inside the NMC Code itself — which means every values-based question you're asked is secretly built on top of them, whether the panel says so or not.

Care. Compassion. Competence. Communication. Courage. Commitment.

Most candidates can define them. Very few can prove them.

Take Compassion. Say the word, and you get a nod and a note. Tell the panel about the moment your attunement to a frightened patient actually changed what happened next, clinically, measurably, and you get something different: a candidate they remember at 5pm when they're deciding between you and someone else.

Competence works the same way. It isn't your knowledge. It's the story where your knowledge stopped something bad from happening, and you can name the guideline you leaned on while you did it.

I won't cover Courage here. It deserves its own post, because it's the one that quietly ends more NHS interviews than any other, and almost nobody prepares for it properly. That's at 11am.

Which of the six is genuinely hardest for you to turn into a real story? Tell me below — Care, Compassion, Competence, Communication, Courage, Commitment. I read every answer, and it tells me exactly where to start with you.

Interview closer than you'd like? DM me "6Cs" and we'll build your six stories properly, before the panel builds their decision without them.

Sources: NHS England, Compassion in Practice (2012); Nursing and Midwifery Council, The Code.

#The6Cs #CompassionInPractice #NMCCode #NHSInterview2026 #NursingValues #InternationalNurseUK2026 #Band5NHS #Band6NHS #SovereignHealthcareAdvisoryGroup

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