Children's and Young People's Nursing Practice BSc (Hons)

Learn the requirements of becoming a registered nurse through modules in professional practice and nursing practice. Develop skills to communicate with children, young people and their families. Graduate with the qualifications needed to register with the Nursing and Midwifery Council as a Registered Nurse (Children).

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Overview

The BSc (Hons) Children's and Young People's Nursing Practice degree has been established to give you an academic qualification and the vocational education to become a Registered Nurse (Children). You will learn from a highly skilled team and will develop confidence and competence in the care of children and young people who require assistance to meet their health needs.

You'll appreciate the theoretical aspects that are essential to this profession in nursing and also develop the personal skills to communicate with children, young people and their families.

We work closely with local health and social care providers to organise placements which allow you to put theory into practice. Clinical placements will make up 50% of your time on this course.

On successful completion of the course, you'll be eligible to register with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) as a Registered Nurse (Children).

Why us?

In collaboration with local Trusts, this exciting and innovative undergraduate pre-registration nursing course supports the growth of nursing in the region
The Children's and Young People's Nursing Practice course is delivered collaboratively with the other fields of nursing to encourage shared learning, accompanied by a clear emphasis on meeting the nursing needs of children, young people and their families
Undertake a range of clinical placements in local healthcare Trusts, which includes the high quality regional services of The Great North Children’s Hospital in Newcastle
Have opportunities to collaborate in an interprofessional learning capacity with other healthcare courses including Pharmacy, Paramedic Science, Medicine, Biomedical Science, Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy
A distinctive partnership with 251 Medical Squadron provides you with innovative experiences to develop your team building and leadership skills

The School of Nursing and Health Sciences benefits from superb facilities; our Living Lab supports interactive simulation and the development of tomorrow’s nurses
The starting salary for nurses in the NHS is band 5 and experienced senior nurses who have achieved additional qualifications can progress to band 8 and beyond
We have a unique relationship with our Patient, Carer and Public Involvement Group (PCPI) who take part in a variety of activities to support learning
Join the Nursing and Midwifery Society which supports your learning experience in theory and practice, and includes social events
The course is approved by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC)

Course structure

During your first year of the Children's and Young People's Nursing Practice degree, you'll be introduced to the requirements of becoming a registered nurse through studying and completing modules in professional practice and nursing practice. This, combined with learning about physical and human science, will prepare you for your first clinical placements which will be held in local NHS Trusts.

50% of your time over the duration of the Children's and Young People's Nursing course will be in clinical practice under the supervision of registered practitioners, in a range of clinical settings in and out of hospital. A key aspect of our course is patient involvement and patient centred care, and you will have regular contact with our Patient, Carer and Public Involvement (PCPI) members throughout the course, who all have experience and expertise as patients or carers.

As a nurse, you'll need to demonstrate compassionate and caring approaches to patients and interprofessional working in the healthcare workforce. The course provides you with opportunities to learn and work alongside other students and staff from a range of disciplines, as part of the School of Nursing and Health Sciences.

Year 1 (national level 4):

Critical Enquiry for Nursing Practice (10 credits)

Develop the required skills for evidence-based practice. Gain insight into engagement with learning styles, teaching methods and the assessment process. Practise using source materials for the purpose of referencing and citation. Present work to a variety of audiences, for example, peers, academic staff, practice colleagues, and Patient, Carer and Public Involvement (PCPI) participants.

Bio-psychosocial Principles of Health and Wellbeing (20 credits)

Learn through a systems-based approach to anatomy and physiology, psychology and microbiology using patient journeys as illustrations to enhance learning. Explore human health and wellbeing in the context of public health and symptoms of disease. Learn to communicate complex medical terminology to both colleagues and patients in an understandable manner. Develop your understanding of the physiological processes, anatomical and cognitive structures of the human body. Explore overarching themes in anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology, and neurology.

Foundations of Nursing Practice (30 credits)

Explore the core skills of nursing and take a holistic view of the individual focusing on health promotion, comprehensive assessment and the application of evidence-based practice. Understand models of reflective practice to support professional development while building effective relationships with clients and others involved in the provision of healthcare. Focus on core elements that reflect the competence, professionalism and underpinning knowledge which characterise a high-quality nursing workforce. Gain psychomotor skills to perform essential nursing practice through interactive clinical sessions with PCPIs. Explore the consequences of negligence in a risk-free environment through simulated experience.

Practice Placement 1 (60 credits)

Apply theoretical components to clinical practice. Study models of reflective practice together with an overview of interprofessional working. Gain experience and insight into lived patient experience. Understand the importance of respecting an individual’s autonomy and right to make decisions about their own health and wellbeing.

Some modules have prerequisites. Read more about what this means in our Help and Advice article.

Year 2 (national level 5):

Application of Evidence Based Practice for Nurses (20 credits)

Develop an understanding of the key issues related to healthcare practice informed by the best available evidence to support shared decision making. Gain critical appraisal skills and debate how best available evidence can be integrated into healthcare practice and policy. Debate the ethical issues that underpin best practice including consent and risk management. Use a range of research methods and explore their merits and appropriate use. Explore the nature of clinical judgment and research integration.

Holistic Nursing for Altered Physiology to Promote Wellbeing (40 credits)

Gain knowledge of major pathological and physiological changes in the human body, occurring as a result of common diseases and disease processes. Explore the manifestations, impacts and interventions of illness and disease. Build on your knowledge of physical and human sciences and explore altered pathological and physiological change. Use a range of teaching and learning strategies to explore the impact of these changes and define the implications for nursing practice. Study co-morbidity and medico pharmaceutical treatments and modalities in order to enhance wellbeing and recovery, within the context of ethical and professional frameworks.

Practice Placement 2 (60 credits)

Develop knowledge and the application of nursing practice interventions to provide evidence-based, safe, and compassionate physical and psychological care. Effectively assess, plan and implement care and demonstrate a range of nursing interventions. Develop skills and knowledge to formulate a nursing plan of care and undertake observations and clinical interventions with less direct supervision.

Final year (national level 6):

Dissertation (40 credits)

Explore the evidence base of nursing practice and the range and hierarchy of evidence for particular healthcare issues. Select a particular area in your field of nursing and develop your ability to make informed use of published research and other sources of evidence to apply findings to enhance your practice. Enable your production of an independent, negotiated project that analyses an aspect of your discipline.

Leadership and Interprofessional Learning (20 credits)

Develop your knowledge of self-awareness, improving healthcare and working with others. Gain an understanding of key leadership theories and models. Explore your application to healthcare and reflect on your personal strengths along with areas for development. Examine the role of service improvement techniques and consider roles and responsibilities of all professionals alongside the values of team work in interprofessional care. Explore carer and user perspectives in interprofessional care settings to illuminate personal experiences of interprofessional care. Study ethical issues in the context of interprofessional working to gain insight into challenges faced from a variety of viewpoints. Study the impact of information technology, healthcare informatics and issues in transcultural healthcare provision.

Practice Placement 3 (60 credits)

Develop your knowledge and application of nursing to practice within a range of clinical settings. Study care provision across the human lifespan including the health and wellbeing continuum. Learn biological, psychological and sociological theory in the context of person-centred care. Focus on individuals with complex health needs with emphasis on the concept of co-morbidity and the implications for care this entails. Explore pharmacological principles and concordance.

More about BSc (Hons) Children's and Young People's Nursing Practice at Sunderland

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Our Children’s Ward is located in Helen McArdle House and mirrors a real life children’s ward, providing the opportunity to practise skills specific to caring for children.

Decorated with colourful wall murals and equipped with cots and medical equipment specifically for children, the Children’s Ward is an ideal learning environment. Baby and child interactive manikins are used to simulate scenarios that feel as close to real life as possible and enable the development of skills such as bathing and feeding a newborn, and providing intensive and critical care to children across the age spectrum.

View our AccessAble accessibility guide for the Children's Ward.
Children's Ward
Helen McArdle House is based on our City Campus and has benefitted from a multi-million pound investment in modern facilities in recent years.

Many of our healthcare courses are taught here, including Nursing, Paramedic Science, Medicine and Healthcare Sciences, and our School of Psychology is also based here.

The building is made up of a variety of teaching and learning spaces, including mock hospital wards, OSCE suites, the Patient Diagnostic Suite, Mental Health and Wellbeing Suite, and seminar and IT classrooms.

A lot of academic staff offices are based here, with an open-door policy in place.

View our AccessAble accessibility guide for Helen McArdle House.
Helen McArdle House
The Living Lab boasts a unique immersive simulation room, that allows participants to experience a range of simulated scenarios in a safe environment. The space is designed to make scenarios feel as close to reality as possible, to enable students to practise their clinical skills safely. An adjacent debrief room allows groups to observe the scenario in the immersive suite through a live stream (projected onto TV screens) and provide peer feedback and group discussion following the completion of the scenario.

View our AccessAble accessibility guide for Fleming Building.
Immersive Suite
Immersive Suite 360
The University boasts a collection of more than 430,000 books in total, with many more titles available through the inter-library loan service. There are nearly 9,000 journal titles, mostly in electronic format. Each year the University invests around £1 million in new resources. As a student, you will have access to a huge range of online databases such as:

British National Formulary:
Compiled with the advice of clinical experts, the British National Formulary (BNF) provides up-to-date guidance on prescribing, dispensing and administering medicines.

The British Pharmacopoeia:
The British Pharmacopoeia (BP) is the authoritative collection of quality standards for UK medicines and is an essential reference for anyone involved in pharmaceutical R&D, manufacture, testing and regulation.

CINAHL:
CINAHL with Full Text is the world’s most comprehensive source of full text for nursing and allied health journals, providing full text for more than 600 journals indexed in CINAHL.

The Cochrane Library:
The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases that contain high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making.

PubMed Central:
PubMed Central is a service of the US National Library of Medicine that includes over 25 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles and includes links to full text articles and other related resources.

ScienceDirect:
ScienceDirect is a leading full-text scientific database offering journal articles and book chapters covering physical sciences, life sciences, health sciences, and social sciences and humanities.
Library Services - pharmacy, health and wellbeing
The Mental Health Ward is designed to feel like a real Mental Health Ward, with bedrooms, a day room, seclusion room and treatment room, and is suitable to run a range of mental health scenarios.

View our AccessAble accessibility guides for Helen McArdle House.
Mental Health Ward
Mental Health Ward 360
Mock Hospital Ward 360
OSCE Suite 360
There are a range of simulation manikins used across most of our healthcare courses, giving you the opportunity to apply your training in a realistic, yet safe, setting.

Our manikins range from various SimMan patient simulators (SimMan 3G, SimMan ALS, Sim Junior and Sim Baby to name a few) to CAE Apollo and Caesar manikins, to anatomically realistic SimBodies and lower-fidelity simulation manikins.

SimMan and Apollo manikins can demonstrate realistic physiological behaviour, including blood pressure, a pulse, drug recognition technology (in SimMan 3G), and each model can be pre-programmed with various medical scenarios.
Simulation Technology
The Sciences Complex is based on our City Campus. It has benefitted from a multi-million pound investment in modern facilities in recent years and continues to develop as our Health Sciences offer grows.

It is the central hub for many of our Health Sciences courses and is made up of a variety of teaching and learning spaces, including labs, problem-based learning classrooms, and facilities that encourage interprofessional learning. A lot of academic staff offices are based here, with an open-door policy in place.
The Sciences Complex
Map and directions

Facilities

The University of Sunderland offers modern and well-equipped facilities at our Sciences Complex.

Entry requirements

We don’t currently display entry requirements for United States. Please contact the Student Admin team on studentadmin@sunderland.ac.uk or 0191 515 3154.

You must show evidence of recent academic study within the last five years at entry level. Please note we do not accept General Studies AS or A Level.

Your completed application form will be reviewed by our Admissions Team to ensure that you have the required entry qualifications. If you meet these requirements, then your application will be individually assessed by the Admissions Tutor and if successful you will be shortlisted for interview.

The selection process will include an individual interview and a group activity which will assess you on your values, problem solving and communication skills.

Accreditation of Prior Learning (APL)
This is available to applicants who meet the course specific APL requirements. It may apply to applicants who wish to transfer their NMC approved nursing studies from another university where they have achieved 120 credits at Level 4. The APL entry route is also available to Nursing Associates who are aiming to become a registered nurse.

If you are interested in the APL route, please contact the admissions tutors for further information: Shelly Rowell at shelly.rowell@sunderland.ac.uk or on 07976215092, or Helen Robinson at helen.robinson@sunderland.ac.uk or on 07977451156.

Access
We would be looking for a combination of merit and distinctions in your level 3 units which should preferably include some units in a Health or a Science related subject. We also require a minimum of grade C in maths and English language or equivalent. If you have studied for a GCSE which has a numerical grade then you will need to achieve a grade 4 or above.

Fitness to practise
Medical assessments of your mental and physical health and disclosure of criminal convictions apply to all nursing courses and are based on current NMC requirements. Nurses are registered health care professionals and the ability to practise safely, effectively and professionally is essential, so all applicants are required to follow our fitness to practise procedures. This means you are required to complete the following:

A health declaration form. Here you must demonstrate that you are of good health, good character and can satisfactorily pass occupational health screening. In addition, you will be required to attend an Occupational Health Assessment with an NHS Trust. The University will, taking into account current NMC regulations, make any reasonable adjustments if required. Please refer to the HEOPS nursing student fitness standards.
A self-declaration form about your conduct.
Obtain an Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. The cost of the DBS check is covered by the University.

Instructions on how you complete these checks will be sent to you once you hold a conditional firm offer with us. These forms are then reviewed alongside your application, and you must meet both the academic and fitness to practise requirements before you will be given an unconditional offer. If you are successful, you will also need to complete an annual declaration form to confirm you are fit and there are no changes to your DBS.

We require international applicants to meet the equivalent UK entry requirements and IELTS with a minimum of 6.5 in each element with an overall score of 7. To be eligible for an interview, you must currently have attained an overall IELTS score of at least 7 with 6.5 in each element.

Students studying a health or social care course, that has a placement within the NHS or any other Care Quality Commission establishment, are strongly encouraged to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Find out more in our Help and Advice article.

Is your qualification not displaying here? For international qualifications, search our full list of international entry requirements for this course.

Fees and finance

Annual fees for 2023/24:

£9,250 if you are from the UK/Europe*
£14,000 if you are an international student

*European Union (EU), EEA (European Economic Area), and Swiss nationals who do not qualify for the EU Settlement Scheme are classed as international, however, for 23/24 admission you will receive a European student fee scholarship and will pay the home tuition fee rate for the duration of your studies. The discounted fee will be reflected in your offer letter. Learn more in our Help and Advice article.

A non-repayable grant of £5,000 and extra payments worth up to £3,000 is available to eligible home students for each year of study. Read more about the Training Grant on The NHS Business Services Authority website.

If you currently serve (or have recently served) within the Armed Forces, then the Ministry of Defence's ELCAS scheme may be able to help cover your funding for this course. For more information, see our Funding for Armed Forces personnel page.

Take a look at the Your Finances section to find out about the scholarships and bursaries that may be available to you.

This information was correct at the time of publication.

Career ready

There are 56,010 Children's Nurses on the NMC register (2022) all of whom are involved in a rewarding and challenging key worker career. Every day they make a difference to the lives of children and young people in need of healthcare. The completion of this course will lead to registration as a nurse (Children).

Find out more about where a career in nursing could take you.

Career options

Children's nurses are responsive to the needs of children, young people and their families and deliver care within a variety of settings, including hospitals, health centres, children’s centres, GP practices and the family home.

They are key members of the multi-disciplinary team involved in the delivery of care to children and young people with healthcare needs.

Start your nursing career at the University of Sunderland working in the local healthcare organisations and develop lifelong nursing skills in a collaborative and supportive environment. Many career opportunities are available post-qualification and with additional qualifications, nurses have the potential of earning £40k plus.

Placements

At all levels of the course, you will undertake unpaid clinical placements in hospitals and the community. The placements occur in blocks of varying duration:

Year 1 – two nine week long placement blocks (18 weeks in total)
Year 2 – three seven week long placement blocks (21 weeks in total)
Year 3 – two blocks, which are nine and 16 weeks long (25 weeks in total)

Your first placement will take place in the first term, after ten weeks of teaching.

You will undertake your placements at any of our partner trusts: South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust, The Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, North Tees and Hartlepool Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and Harrogate, and District NHS Foundation Trust.

During your placements, you will be assigned Practice Assessors and Practice Supervisors who will directly assess and supervise you, as well as act as a means of support and guidance.

As you may be expected to travel long distances, start your shift in the early hours, or finish your shift late at night, you could be entitled to Travel and Dual Accommodation Expenses (TDAE) which allows you to make a retrospective claim for excess travel costs and/or expenses for temporary accommodation near to the location of your placement. Find out more about the NHS Learning Support Fund.

Meet the students

We face challenges, but the lecturers guide you through this and encourage you to grow.

Emma Krieger
To sum up my time so far, I would say it’s been challenging, life-changing and worthwhile.

Verity Cox

Nursing FAQs

Do I need work experience?
We appreciate that it is not possible to obtain work experience in the health or caring environment. As an alternative we would recommend that you investigate the field of nursing you are interested in through online resources, professional body websites and healthcare organisations so you can demonstrate a clear understanding of the role.

What should I include in my personal statement?
Your personal statement provides a unique opportunity to express your personal qualities and attributes related to a rewarding career in nursing. The statement should include a clear articulation of:

Rationale for your choice of career
How your personality lends itself to a career as a nurse
Evidence of investigation of nursing as a career that demonstrates insight of the role
What attracts you to the profession
Personal qualities and transferable skills that may contribute to success in the course and profession
What sports/activities you enjoy and what skills you have developed

For more advice on your personal statement please read our article on how to write a personal statement when you have no work experience.

What does a nursing interview involve?
Our interviews consist of an individual interview and group activity. For advice on how to prepare, please read our article on how to prepare for interviews for healthcare degrees. Interviews start in late November.

How many weeks holiday is there each year?
You will have seven weeks of holiday per year, with two weeks off at Christmas. The remaining five weeks is spread across the rest of the academic year. The timings of the holidays will vary over the three years and we do try, where possible, to align some of these to the school holidays. You are unable to take holiday outside of these set times, but you will be provided with a three year plan on enrolment.

How far will I have to travel for my placements?
You will undertake your placements at any of our partner NHS Trusts. Placements are limited, so you'll be expected to travel to ensure you gain experience in a wide range of areas. This will allow you to enhance your clinical experience and develop into a children's nurse with the knowledge and skills needed to be a safe and effective practitioner

How long are the placement shifts?
Your standard working week will be around 37.5 hours on a shift pattern which can include nights, early starts, evenings, weekends and bank holidays. Shifts can be anywhere between 7-12 hours and the pattern can vary between Trusts. Your shifts will be confirmed four weeks prior to starting your placement. It is not possible to fit placements around school hours and holidays.

Related courses

Contact

Contact the Student Helpline for further information about studying at the University of Sunderland:

0191 515 3000

student.helpline@sunderland.ac.uk

View Programme Specifications for the Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellbeing.

Page last updated: 10 August 2023

We aim to provide clear, accurate and timely information to prospective and current students. We continuously review and enhance course content in consultation with our students and the information provided on our website is the latest available. If you have received an offer from us to start a course, we will communicate any important changes to you in writing. We will always seek to ensure that our prospective students are fully aware of the basis on which they are accepting an offer.

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