Studying Social Work at University
Social Work Degrees
Nursing degrees aren’t all about having your nose stuck in a book. There's lots of practical hands on experience with patients in hospital and community settings which you will undertake as a part of your learning experience.
Did you know nursing is the most employable type of degree course in the UK, with 94% of students in employment within six months of finishing their course?
There are four primary fields of nursing which can be focused upon or are studied at university. These are:
Adult Nursing
Adult nursing is a rewarding career where you have a real chance to make a difference to people's lives. As part of your training, you can expect to learn new skills and procedures that help patients.
Your nursing career will mean working with adults of all ages. They may suffer from one or more long or short-term physical health conditions. This could include heart disease, injuries from an accident, pneumonia, arthritis, diabetes or cancer.
Building a trusting relationship with each patient is essential. Your aim is to improve your patients’ quality of life, whatever their situation. You’ll need to take lots of factors into account and juggle many priorities to get the best possible results for your patients.
Children’s Nursing
Child nursing involves everything from nursing a sick newborn to an adolescent road accident victim. You'll need to consider the care and support needed by the wider family, including parents and carers.
Nursing a child is not just a question of caring for a small adult. Children have very specific health needs and you need to understand how a healthy child develops towards adulthood to minimise the impact of illness. This involves working in closely with the parents or guardians.
Communication is also factor when treating children. Adults can express their feelings and can identify the severity and nature of pain. A child may not be able to communicate this in such detail and the nurse needs to interpret child’s behaviour and reactions. Children's nurses need to be able to spot when a child's health takes a turn for the worse, which can often happen rapidly.
Learning Disability Nursing
Learning disability nurses work to provide specialist healthcare and support to people with a learning disability, as well as their families and staff teams, to help them live a fulfilling life.
Children identified as having a learning disability are living longer, more fulfilled lives into adolescence, adulthood and older age. Learning disability nurses play a vital role working across the whole life span in both health and care settings.
Learning disability nurses teach someone the skills to find work, which can be significant in helping them to lead a more independent, healthy life.
The main areas of your role as a learning disability nurse involve
- improving or maintaining a person’s physical and mental health
- reducing barriers to them living an independent life
- supporting the person in living a fulfilling life
- Learning disability nurses may also help people to learn the skills needed to find work. This can be significant in helping them to lead a more independent and healthy life where they can relate to others on equal terms.
Mental Health Nursing
Mental health nursing is a demanding but rewarding career choice. Your role would be promoting and supporting a person’s recovery and enabling them to have more involvement and control over their condition.
For some people, mental health problems can be triggered by an event such as divorce, the death of someone close, birth, alcohol and drug abuse or changes in personal circumstances, including at work.
Your role is to build effective relationships with people who use your services, and also with their relatives and carers. You might help one person to take their medication correctly while advising another about relevant therapies or social activities.
Success comes from being able to establish trusting relationships quickly, to help individuals understand their situation and get the best possible outcome. You will be trained about the legal context of your work and also be able to identify whether and when someone may be at risk of harming themselves or someone else.
Helping people back to mental health is every bit as valuable and satisfying as caring for those with a physical illness.
All of these fields offer students the opportunity to make a real difference to the lives of people each and every day. There are some degree courses that allow you to study in two of the fields. These are commonly known as ‘dual field’ degrees. Once you have qualified you’ll be able to work as a nurse anywhere in the UK and even internationally.
Nursing Assessments
There are a number of ways you will be assessed when you study for a nursing degree. You will undertake assessments in both theory and practice. Examples of assignments you will be expected to complete include essays, exams, posters and reports. Your clinical skills will be assessed in simulation suites and by mentors in practice placements.
Assignments are designed not just to test what you know, but to help you develop your knowledge, skills and confidence.
Because we want you to reach your full potential in every assignment, we build in opportunities for practice and 'feed forward' on assessment tasks so that you will know what you need to do to perform at your best when you submit your work.
When we return your work, we give you clear feedback that will show you what you need to work on next time. You'll have the opportunity to discuss the comments on your work one-to-one with your lecturers and your personal tutor.
Further Study
After studying to become an adult nurse, you need to be committed to learning and always keep your skills and knowledge up to date.
After qualifying and gaining some clinical experience, there are a variety of routes you could take as the next step in your career. Some nurses decide to do into management, teaching or clinical academic research. With additional education and training, you could also specialise in roles such as health visiting, neo-natal nursing or school nursing.
Nurse Consultant
As you gain more experience, you might be able to apply for jobs as a nurse consultant. You would spend a minimum of 50% of your time working directly with patients. Your also have a number of other roles and responsibilities including:
- developing personal practice
- involvement in research
- contributing to the education, training and development of other nurses.
Consultant nurse roles are specialised and posts are created based on the health needs of local communities. They are also among the highest paid nurses in the NHS.
NHS Leadership Academy
The NHS Leadership Academy runs a number of programmes to support nurses into leadership roles including the Mary Seacole programme. They also offer a programme purely for frontline nurses and midwives to help develop their skills and build confidence.
Find out more about information on the NHS Leadership Academy and its programmes.
Education and Training Roles
Education, training the professional development of the next generation of nurses is vital to delivery of patient care. Nurses can get involved through a number of roles:
Preceptors
Preceptors offer guidance and support to newly qualified nurses. They will be qualified practitioners and normally have experience in the area of practice as the practitioner requiring support.
Mentors
Mentors or assessors are responsible for a range of activity and learning for student nurses, such as the quality of the learning in a practice setting and the assessment of a student's competence.
Practice Educators
Practice educators lead the teaching and development in the practical setting rather than the theoretical setting which would be led by a lecturer. The practice educator will provide guidance and support to mentors involved with students and will provide a link between the practice setting and the university.
Lecturers
The lecturer is responsible for classroom teaching in universities. The role is similar to that of the practice educator in the practice environment and both roles have equal standing.
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