Program Overview

If you are a registered nurse or midwife looking to become a health visitor, this course is ideal for you to contribute positively to the new public health agenda to tackle health inequalities on an individual and community basis and become an independent, resilient, dynamic, practitioner, who can promote a critical enquiry of specialist community public health nursing practice. Your educational journey of personal and professional development in a supportive and student-centred environment builds on your prior knowledge, skills and experience.

This Nursing and Midwifery Council-approved course leads to registration on Part 3 of the register as a specialist community public health nurse (health visiting) and be recorded as a community prescriber, and for academic development at master’s level. You develop public health practice knowledge and skills in order to work effectively with individuals, families and communities along with public health leadership skills, to enable you to contribute to the contemporary health visiting agenda.

Leadership is a key element, and you focus on quality improvement and how leadership skills and qualities can influence achievement of sustained change within SCPHN practice, and develop as a responsive, resilient and flexible practitioner who can respond to the changing health and social care environment. You investigate the health needs, protection and surveillance of the child and family in a health visiting context – and community practitioner prescribing.

This is a practice-centred course with 50% taught theory and 50% practice. You require a contract and agreement with a health trust, local authority or employer to provide a clinical placement. You are allocated a practice assessor by your sponsoring organisation – they facilitate your learning in practice and are responsible for assessing your competence in practice.

You explore evidence appraisal, to understand the evidence which underpins and supports practice. Your practice experience enables you to link your theoretical knowledge base to practice. You learn alongside students from a range of local partners, as well as students on postgraduate courses which encourages different perspectives and ideas.

Your dissertation is an opportunity for you to consolidate and develop further skills and knowledge from previous modules in a specific area of interest to apply your research-related knowledge to identify a researchable problem, plan and execute a study.

Top reasons to study this course include:

• Our strong links with local social care services, the NHS trusts, private and charitable organisations, and service users ensure the course content is relevant and current
• Become an independent, resilient, dynamic, practitioner, who can promote a critical enquiry of specialist community public health nursing practice
• You learn with students from a range of backgrounds in an inclusive, diverse and supportive environment, which will enrich your learning experience.
• Experienced, dedicated and enthusiastic teaching team have a strong focus on evidence-base practice
• Varied and unique career prospects across all areas of health and social care