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Nursing Associate

Entry requirements


Minimum of one A2 level with minimum of 32 tariff points

Pass the Access plus GCSE English and Maths at grade 4 / C or above.

GCSE/National 4/National 5

Applicants should be educated to at least GCSE level, including GCSEs in Maths and English at grades 9-4/ A*-C or equivalent such as functional skills level 2 in Maths and English.

International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme

24

32 points

UCAS Tariff

32

Maximum of two qualifications at 16 tariff points each.

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Attend an interview

About this course


Course option

2years

Full-time | 2024

Subject

Adult nursing

**Fully accredited by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) providing eligibility for registration as a Nursing Associate on successful completion of the course (Registration is subject to meeting good health and character requirements and payment of a registration fee).**

- Well-established clinical placements, teaching and research links with local collaborating NHS trusts and other healthcare providers, such as private hospitals, hospices and community settings.

- Study locations in Coventry, London, Scarborough and Salisbury.

Development of the health and social care workforce is pivotal to building the capacity and capability needed to deliver compassionate, high-quality evidence-based care to a diverse and ageing population. This course gives you the opportunity to develop a range of practical skills and the underpinning knowledge to allow you to make a real difference to quality of life and care of people of all ages and in a wide range of healthcare settings.

The Nursing Associate foundation degree is designed to meet the educational requirements necessary for the nursing associate role, enabling successful graduates to register as a Nursing Associate with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), and work supporting registered nurses delivering hands-on care in a wide variety of clinical settings (Registration is subject to meeting good health and character requirements and payment of a registration fee. Further details about the registration fee, eligibility and process are available on the NMC website).

It also offers a pathway to other nursing roles, including that of a graduate nurse through progression onto a pre-registration programme. After successfully completing this course it may be possible to transfer on to the second year of a BSc Nursing degree, but this would depend on NMC requirements and standards and your chosen field of nursing, therefore this cannot be guaranteed.

Equal time and weighting is given to the practical and theoretical components of the course. The course is taught by experienced nurses and healthcare professionals who will support you in your journey to becoming an NMC-registered Nursing Associate.

Placements will take place with one of our collaborator settings, which will normally be in the same region as your chosen campus, however, to ensure you have a breadth of placement experiences, and to ensure that all required NMC experiences are covered, you may be required to travel to attend placements. We aim for placements to be allocated within 45 minutes drive of the Trust and do our best to minimise travel time for our students. For Coventry students this should take place within the Coventry and Warwickshire area. For Scarborough students this will be in the area of North Yorkshire and East Riding. London based students will have placements within the wider London area. Salisbury based students will be based in the Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust. Please be aware that due to potential restrictions and capacity, placement locations may change. In your placements you will be supernumerary (not counted in the staff numbers) and will have an allocated Practice Assessor and Practice Supervisor to facilitate and assess your learning in practice.

In response to a high demand for the nursing associate role, we offer a route on to this course at our Coventry, Scarborough and London campuses, as well as from Wiltshire College and University Centre in Salisbury. The course was developed in collaboration with health and social care employers in Coventry and Warwickshire, Scarborough, Salisbury and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London. Our practice learning collaborators provide clinical learning placements for students and input to the ongoing development and evaluation of the course.

Modules

Year One
On commencing the course, you will study two modules. This will be an introduction to science and a clinical skills module spanning 13 weeks before you start your first 10-week mandatory placement, which is sourced by the University. You will then undertake a module to develop more advanced clinical skills and underpinning knowledge before your second 10-week placement of year one.

Modules
Introduction to Nursing Science (20 credits – compulsory)
Foundation Skills for Nursing Care (20 credits – compulsory)
Foundations in Communication and Professional Practice (Practice Placement 1) (30 credits – compulsory)
Applied Nursing Science (20 credits – compulsory)
Promoting Health and Wellbeing and Preventing Ill Health (Practice Placement 2) (30 credits – compulsory)

Year Two
In year two, you will learn about the evidence base underpinning nursing care and develop your knowledge of drugs and therapies for all age groups and fields of nursing. This will equip you for your first clinical placement of year two. You will then go on to develop your knowledge of legal and ethical aspects of care and advance your teaching skills prior to your final 10-week clinical placement of year two. As in year one all placements are sourced by the University.

Modules
Therapeutic Approaches in Nursing Care (20 credits – compulsory)
Evidence-Based Nursing Practice (10 credits – compulsory)
Providing and Monitoring Safe Care (Practice Placement 3) (30 credits – compulsory)
Supporting Learning and Assessment (10 credits – compulsory)
Foundations in Legal and Ethical Aspects of Care (20 credits – compulsory)
Effective Teamwork and Transition to Nursing Associate (Practice Placement 4) (30 credits – compulsory)

We regularly review our course content, to make it relevant and current for the benefit of our students. For these reasons, course modules may be updated.

Assessment methods

A wide variety of assessment are used throughout the course with half of the assessments taking place in your clinical placement areas. All of the assessments are designed to integrate theory and practice and to build on previous learning experiences. As you will be working 30 hours each week on your university studies or placement, this has been taken into account during the scheduling of the assessments to ensure a balanced and manageable assessment load both within modules and for the duration of the course.

Assessments include case study-based essays, presentations, reflections, practical clinical examinations, teaching Service Users or peers, and exams such as drug knowledge and calculations. Resources such as interactive workbooks and online quizzes are provided to help you assess your own learning as well as preparing you for assessments. Compassionate and caring attitudes and values are central to the role and will be assessed throughout the course.

The Coventry University Group assessment strategy ensures that our courses are fairly assessed and allows us to monitor student progression towards achieving the intended learning outcomes.

Tuition fees

Select where you currently live to see what you'll pay:

Channel Islands
£9,250
per year
England
£9,250
per year
Northern Ireland
£9,250
per year
Republic of Ireland
£9,250
per year
Scotland
£9,250
per year
Wales
£9,250
per year

The Uni


Course locations:

Coventry University

Hudson Building

CU Scarborough

Salisbury Campus, Wiltshire College and University Centre

Salisbury Campus, Wiltshire College and University Centre

Salisbury Campus, Wiltshire College and University Centre

Department:

School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health

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What students say


We've crunched the numbers to see if overall student satisfaction here is high, medium or low compared to students studying this subject(s) at other universities.

64%
Adult nursing

How do students rate their degree experience?

The stats below relate to the general subject area/s at this university, not this specific course. We show this where there isn’t enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.

Adult nursing

Teaching and learning

77%
Staff make the subject interesting
83%
Staff are good at explaining things
75%
Ideas and concepts are explored in-depth
88%
Opportunities to apply what I've learned

Assessment and feedback

Feedback on work has been timely
Feedback on work has been helpful
Staff are contactable when needed
Good advice available when making study choices

Resources and organisation

78%
Library resources
90%
IT resources
84%
Course specific equipment and facilities
45%
Course is well organised and has run smoothly

Student voice

Staff value students' opinions
Feel part of a community on my course

Who studies this subject and how do they get on?

97%
UK students
3%
International students
8%
Male students
92%
Female students
67%
2:1 or above
14%
First year drop out rate

Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)

C
C
D

After graduation


The stats in this section relate to the general subject area/s at this university – not this specific course. We show this where there isn't enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.

Adult nursing

What are graduates doing after six months?

This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.

£21,909
low
Average annual salary
100%
med
Employed or in further education

Top job areas of graduates

100%
Nursing and midwifery professionals

What about your long term prospects?

Looking further ahead, below is a rough guide for what graduates went on to earn.

Adult nursing

The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.

£30k

£30k

£32k

£32k

£33k

£33k

Note: this data only looks at employees (and not those who are self-employed or also studying) and covers a broad sample of graduates and the various paths they've taken, which might not always be a direct result of their degree.

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This information comes from the National Student Survey, an annual student survey of final-year students. You can use this to see how satisfied students studying this subject area at this university, are (not the individual course).

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This information is from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), for undergraduate students only.

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Post-six month graduation stats:

This is from the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education Survey, based on responses from graduates who studied the same subject area here.

It offers a snapshot of what grads went on to do six months later, what they were earning on average, and whether they felt their degree helped them obtain a 'graduate role'. We calculate a mean rating to indicate if this is high, medium or low compared to other universities.

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Graduate field commentary:

The Higher Education Careers Services Unit have provided some further context for all graduates in this subject area, including details that numbers alone might not show

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The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset combines HRMC earnings data with student records from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

While there are lots of factors at play when it comes to your future earnings, use this as a rough timeline of what graduates in this subject area were earning on average one, three and five years later. Can you see a steady increase in salary, or did grads need some experience under their belt before seeing a nice bump up in their pay packet?

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