A student nurse from Bolton is one of only five students in the world to be awarded a scholarship for a conference in Australia. Aysha Badat is in her third year of an adult nursing degree at the University of Salford, hoping to graduate to go into a successful nurse manager job.

She spends half of her working life studying and the other half on placements, mostly at the Royal Bolton Hospital. Mrs Badat is 31 years old and has already won a nursing award and attended other events. The Daubhill based nurse will head to Australia next month as the only UK nursing student to attend the conference.

She said: “It’s a privilege and a real honour. It’s going to be an experience and is a big opportunity for me. I’m excited and nervous. I hope to learn a lot at the conference and that it will help me with my final months of study, as well as share what I learn with others.”

Mrs Badat worked for the primary care trust, NHS Bolton, which oversees local health services in intermediate care before starting to train to become a nurse in 2007. She won the Royal Bolton Hospital’s Jackie Solomon Excellence Award for her work in 2008, and used her £250 prize money to attend an international conference in Cambridge in September, 2009.

She has beaten off nearly 100 competitors across the globe to secure a place at the Nurse Education Today and Nurse Education in Practice 2010 conference in Sydney. There she will learn about the latest developments in nursing education, research, practice and innovations from experts from around the world.