This course is an entry route for registered Nursing Associates to join our existing students on the BSc (Hons) Mental Health Nursing degree course. 

Our high-tech, high-speed lifestyles and the pressure of constant connection to social media means that mental health and wellbeing is a growing health concern for our society. During this accelerated course, you’ll develop the expertise to manage both the physical and psychological needs of patients.

Some of the topics you’ll explore include the ethics of medicine management, recovery approaches, and intervention therapies for substance abuse. You’ll also learn practical skills in conflict resolution, how to manage challenging behaviour, and how to safeguard vulnerable patients.

When you’re on campus, you’ll practice clinical techniques, such as how to manually take a patient’s blood pressure and how to give emergency care in our Clinical Simulation Suite. Here, we create simulations of a patient’s journey from admission to discharge.

To help you feel prepared, you’ll spend half of this course on clinical placements. You may work with elderly patients with dementia in a nursing home, be part of a psychiatric intensive care unit or community psychiatric nursing team helping get patients back into their communities.

All students must demonstrate in their personal statements an understanding of mental health nursing in the UK incorporating the NHS core values and contemporary issues in nursing. You must evidence an understanding of the qualities required to be a nursing professional in the UK in order to be shortlisted for an interview. Successful applicants will be subject to a video/face-to-face interview.

When you graduate, you’ll gain a Bachelor of Science degree and eligibility to register with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) as a mental health nurse.

As a registered mental health nurse, you might work at one of our partner NHS trusts, where you completed a placement experience, or you might move into the private or voluntary sector.

Many of our graduates work as staff nurses in NHS hospitals in the UK and go on to become ward managers or specialist nurses, but you could develop your nursing career in a GP practice, care home, school, hospice, prison or the Armed Forces.

You might decide to specialise in a particular field of nursing and continue with postgraduate study. We have a range of postgraduate courses to support your professional development.