Nursing

 

To become an adult nurse you’ll need to train and study at a degree level. Entry requirements vary depending on where you’d like to study. You can find an adult nursing course to suit you using the NHS Careers Course Finder tool.

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. 

There are many reasons why you should consider a career as an adult nurse. It offers you the chance to make a difference, a high degree of flexibility and a career with excellent employment prospects.

From the start of your training and into your first job, you will learn how to observe patients and assess their needs. You’ll learn to plan and deliver the most appropriate care for them, and evaluate the results. 

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. 

Your aim is to improve your patients’ quality of life, whatever their situation.

As an adult nurse with our Trust, you might be working in/with:

• outpatient units or specialist departments
• the community (e.g. patient’s home, a clinic, GP surgery, walk-in centres, or nursing homes)
• the prison service
• the police 

Adult nurses are a key part of the multidisciplinary teams that look after patients.

You will be at the centre of  multi-disciplinary teams to deliver care. You'll also work closely with patients' families and carers.

Adapted from NHS Careers.

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.

There are many reasons why you should consider a career as a children’s nurse. It offers you the chance to make a difference, a high degree of flexibility and a career with excellent employment prospects.

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.

A child’s care can take place in a range of settings:

• hospitals
• day care centres
• child health clinics
• child's home

Across all fields of nursing, more care is being delivered in the community.

Children's nurses are part of multidisciplinary teams that look after patients. You will be at the centre of teams that include doctors, hospital play staff, healthcare assistants, newborn hearing screeners, psychologists and social workers.

Adapted from NHS Career

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. 

There are many reasons why you should consider a career as a learning disability nurse. It offers you the chance to make a difference, a high degree of flexibility and a career with excellent employment prospects.

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.

You will be supporting people of all ages with learning disabilities in a range of settings, including:

• people's homes
• education
• workplaces
• residential and community centres
• hospitals 
• mental health settings 
• prisons

You may work shifts to provide 24-hour care.You’ll work as part of a team including GPs, psychologists, social workers, teachers, general practitioners, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and healthcare assistants.

Adapted from NHS Careers

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. 

There are many reasons why you should consider a career as a mental health nurse. It offers you the chance to make a difference, a high degree of flexibility and a career with excellent employment prospects. 

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.

Mental health nurses are usually based in hospitals or in the community, as this is where the majority of mental healthcare is offered. If you work in a residential setting, you may do shifts and provide 24-hour care.

Within a hospital you might work in a:  

• psychiatric intensive care unit 
• psychiatric ward 
• outpatients unit 
• specialist unit dealing with eating disorders.

In the community you could work at a: 

• GP surgery
• prison 
• community health care centre 
• residential centre 
• patients’ own homes.

You would work as part of a team which includes general practitioners, psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, occupational therapists, arts therapists and healthcare assistants.

Adapted from NHS Careers

District nurses play a crucial role in the primary healthcare team. They visit people in their own homes or in residential care homes, providing increasingly complex care for patients and supporting family members.

As a district nurse, you'll 

• assess the healthcare needs of patients and families
• monitor the quality of care they're receiving
• be professionally accountable for its delivery

Your patients could be any age, but they'll often be elderly, while others may have been recently discharged from hospital, be terminally ill or have physical disabilities.

You'll be visiting patients every day or more than once a day, offering help, advice and support. You may work on your own or with other groups, such as the social services, voluntary agencies and other NHS organisations and help to provide and co-ordinate a wide range of care services.

As well as providing direct patient care, you'll have a teaching and support role, working with patients to enable them to care for themselves or with family members teaching them how to give care to their relatives. You'll also be accountable for your own patient caseloads. 

You'll play a vital role in keeping hospital admissions and readmissions to a minimum and ensuring that patients can return to their own homes as soon as possible. 

You need to be a registered adult, child, mental health or learning disability nurse to apply for a district nursing training programmes.

District nurse training programmes are known as specialist practitioner programmes and are at degree level. You can also find courses at post graduate certificate and Master's level. They are normally no less than one academic year (32 weeks) full time or part-time equivalent.

Specialist practitioner programmes comprise 50% theory and 50% practice and concentrate on four areas:

• clinical nursing practice
• care and programme management
• clinical practice development
• clinical practice leadership.

Community staff nurses can be funded onto a district nurse specialist practitioner programme via their employing organisation. Sponsorship opportunities are also available each year, usually with a September start, for applicants with the relevant registration and experience.

These are advertised in the nursing press and the NHS Jobs website about six months prior to the start date. 

Adapted from NHS Careers