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Community Health Nursing Specialist Practitioner - District Nursing - PgDip

Currently viewing course to start in 2024/25 Entry.

If you’re looking to develop your nursing career within a community setting, as a District Nurse you can play an important role providing holistic care to patients in their own homes. District Nurses work autonomously, giving often complex care in non-clinical settings, and take a leading role in promoting the health of the community they serve.

  • Level Postgraduate Taught
  • Study mode Full Time
  • Location City South
  • Award PgDip
  • Start date September 2024
  • School School of Health Sciences
  • Faculty Faculty of Health, Education and Life Sciences

This course is:

Overview

If you’re looking to develop your nursing career within a community setting, as a District Nurse you can play an important role providing holistic care to patients in their own homes. District Nurses work autonomously, giving often complex care in non-clinical settings, and take a leading role in promoting the health of the community they serve.

This course is not open to International students.

What's covered in this course?

This course balances expanding your theoretical knowledge with hands-on experience of the range of practical skills you need for the challenging but rewarding role of District Nurse. We will also encourage you to develop a critical approach to care delivery so that you are able to adapt to rapidly changing situations, prevent hospital admissions, support self-care and independence using a holistic, patient-centred approach, manage complex caseloads, and provide education to patients, their families/carers and other healthcare staff effectively.

As a District Nurse, you will become an effective leader of teams, managing staff with a varied mix of skills to drive quality improvement, ensuring that the care delivered is high-quality, evidence-based, safe and effective. We will help develop your ability to assess risk, work within multidisciplinary teams to coordinate care and service delivery and expand your understanding of the political landscape which drives change within the NHS.

We will work in partnership with you, your practice assessor and supervisor to develop your knowledge, skills and behaviours in preparation to practise as a District Nurse in this crucial area that requires highly-skilled practitioners. One of the team will be allocated as your academic assessor to support and supervise your assessment in practice.

This course is designed in line with the NMC standards of proficiency for specialist community practice nursing qualifications (2022) so that you’re prepared for the role of District Nurse and can register with the NMC with this title. The programme also prepares you to practise as a V300 Independent and Supplementary Prescriber, ensuring you can safely prescribe for patients within the scope of your practice in line with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Competency framework for all prescribers (RPS, 2021).

Accredited By

Accredited by: 

  • Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC)

Why Choose Us?

  • We are one of the largest and most diverse providers of health and social care education in the country.
  • By joining us, you’ll be enrolling with the post-registration educator of the year 2017 (Student Nursing Times Awards) and the region’s largest provider of qualified health and social care professionals to the NHS.
  • You’ll benefit from our partnerships across health and social care providers both within the UK and internationally.
  • You’ll learn in specialist environments, with access to our cutting-edge virtual technologies and one of the UK’s largest specialist health education libraries.
  • Our last Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) audit cited the support provided for the students on our courses as demonstrating good levels of practice (2015). 
  • You’ll be based at our City South Campus, which has recently undergone a £41 million expansion, including newly built laboratories and equipment that’ll continue to give you a leading edge in employment.

OPEN DAY

Join us for an on-campus Open Day where you'll be able to learn about this course in detail, chat to students, explore our campus and tour accommodation. Booking isn't open yet for this event, register your interest and we’ll email you as soon as booking goes live.

Next Event: 24 November 2024

Register interest

Entry Requirements

Essential requirements

You must have at least one of the following:

  • You will need to provide evidence of successful completion of accredited Level 6 study within the last 5 years.
  • Have a minimum of 1-2 years professional experience where appropriate.
  • Securing secondment/sponsorship from a Primary care Trust
  • You will require DBS and Occupational Health Clearance prior to course entry.

If you have a qualification that is not listed, please contact us.

Fees & How to Apply

Please select your student status to view fees and apply
  • UK Student
  • International Student

UK students

Annual and modular tuition fees shown are applicable to the first year of study. The University reserves the right to increase fees for subsequent years of study in line with increases in inflation (capped at 5%) or to reflect changes in Government funding policies or changes agreed by Parliament. View fees for continuing students.

Award: PgDip

Starting: Sep 2024

  • Mode
  • Duration
  • Fees
  • Full Time
  • 1 Year
  • TBC

International students

Sorry, this course is not available to International students.

Access to computer equipment

You will require use of a laptop, and most students do prefer to have their own. However, you can borrow a laptop from the university or use one of our shared computer rooms.

Printing

You will receive £5 print credit in each year of your course, available after enrolment.

Field trips

All essential field trips and associated travel costs will be included in your course fees.

Access to Microsoft Office 365

Every student at the University can download a free copy of Microsoft Office 365 to use whilst at university and for 18 months after graduation.

Key Software

You will be able to download SPSS and Nvivo to your home computer to support with your studies and research.

Key subscriptions

Subscriptions to key journals and websites are available through our library.

Excess printing (optional)

Once you have spent your £5 credit, additional printing on campus costs from 5p per sheet.

Books (optional)

All module key texts will be in the University library, but in limited numbers. You may choose to purchase a copy.

Subscriptions (optional)

You may wish to purchase subscriptions to additional journals and websites.

Memberships (optional)

You may wish to join a union or professional body related to this course.

Accommodation and living costs

The cost of accommodation and other living costs are not included within your course fees. More information on the cost of accommodation can be found in our accommodation pages.

This course is not available to International Students

Please note: All communication from the University is sent via email. Please ensure that you supply an email address on your application form that you check regularly.

Personal statement

You’ll need to submit a personal statement as part of your application for this course. This will need to highlight your passion for postgraduate study – and your chosen course – as well as your personal skills and experience, academic success, and any other factors that will support your application for further study.

Not sure what to include? We’re here to help – take a look at our top tips for writing personal statements and download our free postgraduate personal statement guide for further advice and examples from real students.

Course in Depth

Level 7

In order to complete this course a student must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 120 credits):

Download course specification

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Course aims

  • The course will prepare students to work effectively as a community specialist practitioner in line with the NMC Standards (2022) and the RPS Framework (2021).
  • Students will be prepared to enter the workforce as qualified District Nurses with an understanding of local, national, and global issues related to their roles.
  • Students who complete the course successfully will be able to register their SPQ and V300 qualifications with the NMC (must be completed within 5 years).
  • The course will facilitate the development of students who are striving for excellence, applying theory to practice, and gaining exposure to a variety of interdisciplinary learning experiences.

Assessment methods

The course offers both formative and summative assessments:

  • Formative assessments are those interim assessment opportunities whereby you can gain an enhanced understanding of how well you are progressing with your learning. Modes of formative feedback include self-evaluation quizzes with automated answer feedback, group work feedback, peer feedback, mock exams and feedback from practice assessor and supervisors in clinical practice.
  • Summative assessments are used to make judgements about what you have learned and that you have met the learning outcomes, to enable award of qualifications and academic credits. Some of the summative assessment methods used for this course include presentations, exams, assignments, report writing.
Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC)
The Nursing and Midwifery Council

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) works with partner organisations to set and maintain high standards of nursing and midwifery education across the UK.

This course has been approved and monitored by the NMC to make sure that the education and training on offer meets their standards.

To work as a nurse or midwife, you must pass an NMC approved course at a higher education institution (HEI) in pre-registration nursing and midwifery, leading to registration with the NMC.

Employability

Enhancing employability skills

This course is intended to enhance your career prospects and enable you to progress onto more senior public health jobs at either operational, policy or commissioning levels.

On successful completion of the programme, your Specialist Practitioner qualification will be recorded by the NMC and entered on NMC register.

Facilities & Staff

We have invested over £400 million in our facilities, including an upgrade to our Skills and Simulation facilities at City South Campus. We boast up-to-date, innovative facilities that simulate the real situations that you may come across in the workplace. These resources are essential in offering you a hands-on introduction to health and social care practice.

Mock Wards

These are set up to look like typical hospital wards, with four-six bays. Depending on the topic in hand, different manikins can be used as patients and relevant equipment is provided to practise clinical skills. Some of the manikins are interactive and can simulate different scenarios e.g. some allow you to cannulate, check pulses, intubate etc, and some can talk to you. One ward is often used as an adult ward, and the other as a child ward.

These rooms also allow for scenarios to be set up for other professions such as dietetics, paramedic science and social work.

The Operating Theatre and Recovery Suites

The operating theatre and recovery suite gives you the sense of what it would be like in a real surgical environment.

These spaces emulate the full surgical journey from anaesthetics, through surgery and into recovery. ODP students can practice a range of skills including gowning, hand washing, preparing instrument trays, and working with a patient. Nurses and midwives may experience a surgical placement and need to go to theatre or be part of the midwifery team involved with caesarean sections. Many other Allied Health Professionals may also see patients in recovery if necessary.

Home Environment Room

This space is used to simulate non-clinical settings, as not everything health professionals deal with is hospital based. This is used for simulations of home visits and home births. It also houses soft matting and a bubble machine that are used by the Learning Disability Nursing team.

Assisted Living Space

This space replicates a flat and is used for scenarios such as home visits. The sitting room area provides a different space to practise skills and simulations and work with service users and other students.

Assisted Kitchen

This specially designed kitchen has different areas where you can practice cooking, cleaning, boiling the kettle etc., with someone who has actual or simulated visual impairments. There are adapted devices to help, and simulation glasses for you to wear to experience visual impairments.

Physiotherapy Room

This is a space for physiotherapy students to use, with various equipment to practise client meetings.

Radiotherapy Planning Computer Suite

Our computers allow you to plan hypothetical treatments, in terms of angles and directions, ensuring that radiotherapy reaches where it is needed on a patient’s body.

Radiography Image Interpretation and Reporting Stations Computer Suite

These facilities allow you to view and analyse x-rays.

VERT - Virtual Environment for Radiotherapy Training

This room contains 3D technology to view virtual patients and look at trajectories for treatment.

Radiotherapy

This room contains the same bed/couch used when patients are given radiotherapy treatment. While students of course do not administer radiotherapy in this room, it does allow them to practise adjusting the equipment to make sure both it and a patient would be in the correct position to receive treatment.

Telehealth Room

This room allows for small group teaching in a central area (large boardroom type table) with five small telehealth booths down either side. These are to allow all our health professions students to practise delivering healthcare and advice remotely, either over the phone or on a video call. This addition to our teaching reflects moves in the sector to offer more flexible access to healthcare services, particularly as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Imaging Academy

This new facility is a larger version of our existing image interpretation computer facilities and forms part of the Midlands Imaging Academy Hub, funded by Health Education England. These expanded facilities will mean we can further develop our courses and expertise in radiography and imaging.

Speech and Language Therapy Resource Room

Our Speech and Language Therapy Team have developed a collection of tools, books and resources to help you learn and understand the implications of a speech or swallowing limitation. You can practise one to one client meetings and clinics and use the video recording equipment to review role play scenarios.

Ultrasound simulation suite

You have access to a wide range of Ultrasound simulation equipment to develop your clinical skills and aid in training. The equipment includes two ultrasound machines with a range of phantoms, scan training stations and eve body works.


Our staff

Rachel Hogan

Senior Lecturer

Rachel qualified as an Adult Nurse from BCU in 2003, post qualifying she spent some time in the acute setting within Trauma and Orthopaedics and Critical Care. As a student, Rachel fell in love with community nursing and moved into that setting in 2006. She spent the next 10 years working within community nursing undertaking further qualifications...

More about Rachel