Which nursing course is right for you?

If you are looking to get into a nursing career, you've come to the right place, as we offer a range of courses all based at our City South campus. There are a lot of courses to choose from, so it's understandable if you can't make your mind up.

With our nursing courses, the first two years are integrated, with all fields of nursing working together. This ensures you have everything you will need to apply for Registered Nurse (RN) status following completion of your degree. In your final year, you will specialise in your chosen nursing area and take in-depth modules around the subject.

Some other similarities include: 

• Placements throughout the course will be in your chosen field
• The healthcare sector is going through an unprecedented period of change, with increasing levels of complexity in provision and demand for services
• Effective leadership is important to take this forward
• Our nursing courses include modules in leadership and management so you can feel confident to progress in your career
• Delivering safe and high-quality care - so whichever field you choose, you are set up for a successful career, able to deliver high quality care for your patients

We’ll go over the areas in more details below, and their differences. You can also take our handy quiz at the end of this blog to find out which area would suit you best based on your strengths and interests.

Nursing – Adult

Adult Nursing as a discipline focuses on caring for individuals that are over the age of 18. Adult nurses can work in a variety of settings from hospitals and GP surgeries to the armed forces and patient homes.

Adult Nursing offers a huge variety of opportunities – you could work with patients who need short-term emergency or intensive care, those managing chronic conditions, or offer ongoing support in residential care settings. 

Many nurses work in NHS hospitals in a huge variety of specialisms, from A&E to vascular, but you could also work in the community, as a health visitor, district nurse or other specialist role. There are also many opportunities outside the NHS, working for private clinics or nursing homes or charities such as hospices. 

Through your placement experiences on the course, you will experience a variety of settings, working in different specialisms with patients with different levels of need. It’s important that you get experience of working in community settings as well as hospital settings, so we ensure you get a range of placements settings, to prepare you for your future career and help you find out which area you want to work in future.

Nursing – Child

If you're interested in focusing on the care of children, our Child Nursing course will teach you all the professional skills needed to be able to deliver compassionate, empathic and skilled family-centred care. You’ll work with families to assess and provide high-quality care, and develop your mental, cognitive, behavioural, social and health skills on top of your clinical knowledge.  

Child nurses, like adult nurses, have the option of working in a wide range of specialist fields. There are community options too, such as school nurse. The added complication of being a children’s nurse is that the patient may not always be able to verbalise what’s wrong, so having good communication skills is vital. Child nurses also need to be aware of the needs of the family as well as the patient – reassuring parents as well as treating the child.

As well as this, our City South campus hosts a wealth of specialist facilities, including a bespoke children’s area in our mock wards with child and baby SIMulation (SIM) manikins. SIM manikins are anatomically correct and used for teaching specific techniques such as advanced  life support skills, acute and high dependency clinical skills, first aid and communication skills. The SIM manikins are have software which is used to replicate real symptoms, and are enhanced by the ability to manipulation of  factors such as blood pressure, pulse and heart rate for extra realism. 

Nursing – Learning Disability

Working with individuals who have learning disabilities is a rewarding career path. It's important for learning disability nurses to deliver high quality and safe care, because your role is central to ensuring equality of access to healthcare services for people with learning disabilities. We support you to gain the skills and knowledge to work in partnership with a range of professionals, interdisciplinary teams and, most importantly, the service user, carer and family. 

Learning disability nurses often work in residential settings, building long-term relationships with their clients, and looking after all aspects of their care. Or they may have a community role, supporting people to live independently in their own home. There are also roles for learning disability nurses in hospital, working as advocates for patients during their stay in hospital, and ensuring that they understand what is happening, and have the care and support they need.

Our facilities include a specialist home environment flat, which can be used to simulate home visits for learning disability nursing. This ensures you're getting to learn in realistic scenarios.

Nursing – Mental Health

Our Mental Health Nursing course will teach you about the fundamentals of caring for people with a variety of mental health conditions. Caring for people with mental health problems requires a lot of attention to detail, decision making and ability to assess risks.

As mental health nurse, you may be working with someone at a point of crisis during a stay in hospital, or helping them manage the day-to-day aspects of a chronic mental health problem. Mental health nurses also work with patients in secure settings – both specialist high-security psychiatric hospitals and prisons. Placement experiences as part of the course will ensure you experience a range of settings, working with patients experiencing both acute and chronic mental health issues.

A mental health nurse needs to be patient and empathetic, understanding patients who struggle to communicate, and also able to keep calm in stressful situations and reassure someone who is agitated or distressed. 

We have strong links with some of the largest NHS Trusts in the country, including Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust and Forward Thinking Birmingham. These partnerships provide unique experiences and the opportunity to build a network of invaluable contact.  

What are Dual Awards?

Many of our nursing courses are labelled as ‘dual award’, and you may be wondering what this means. A dual award course simply means that you’ll be specialising in two different fields of nursing, giving you the opportunity to register in both fields by the end of your four-year course. 

For the first two years, you will study alongside BSc nursing students  with theoretical content integrated to be relevant to all four fields of nursing. Your third and fourth years will be focused on your specialist areas, so you will explore key subjects such as providing safe care with specific application to your chosen fields of nursing.

These courses are MSci qualifications, meaning you will study at Level 7 in your fourth year,  and further develop your knowledge and leadership skills, so you will graduate with additional preparation for a successful career, and the ability to register in two fields of Nursing. 

It is possible to combine any two of the four specialist fields in a dual award course:

• Nursing - Adult and Child - Dual Award 
• Nursing - Adult and Learning Disabilities - Dual Award 
• Nursing - Adult and Mental Health - Dual Award 
• Nursing - Mental Health and Child - Dual Award 
• Nursing - Mental Health and Learning Disabilities - Dual Award
• Nursing - Learning Disability and Child - Dual Award