The University of Newcastle's Master of Nursing will enhance your skills in professional leadership, clinical education, health care improvement, research, and evidence-based practice. You will have the opportunity to further develop your individual areas of interest whilst exploring and learning to adapt to the challenging and constantly changing landscape of professional nursing.

What you will study

The University of Newcastle Master of Nursing enables you to study contemporary issues in nursing, research methods, and knowledge translation in healthcare.

Key study areas include:

• Contemporary Nursing
• Introduction to Research in Health Care
• Knowledge Translation in Health Care

To help you achieve your best career outcome, you can choose to do a generic Master of Nursing or focus your learning by choosing from one of seven purposefully structured specialisations:

• Healthcare Improvement – this specialisation includes leadership, safety and quality, project management, and design. Your fellow students will come from medicine, nursing, business, and design backgrounds.
• Research – a comprehensive foundation for nurses interested in research. You will learn qualitative and quantitative research methods, biostatistics, and epidemiology.
• Child, Youth and Family – in this specialisation you will study key areas such as pregnancy, birth and the family, family studies, special care of the newborn, acute and chronic care of children, and child and youth mental health.
• Chronic Disease and Aging – in this specialisation you will develop a solid knowledge base in areas such as mental health nursing in older people, aging in health, chronic disease prevention and management, and palliative care.
• Acute and Critical Care – in this specialisation you will study acute and critical care courses including emergency, intensive care, acute stroke management, and infection control. With this degree you could seek employment as a clinical nurse specialist in an acute or critical care area.
• Advanced Practice – in this specialisation you will develop your professional knowledge, clinical judgement, and technical skills to an advanced level of capability. You will learn advanced physical assessment, diagnostics, symptom management, and pharmacotherapeutics.
• Clinical Education - this specialisation prepares you to support and teach healthcare students and staff and assist in the development, design, implementation and evaluation of education and professional development programs.

Through studying social, cultural, economic and political influences surrounding nursing and healthcare in general, Master of Nursing graduates will be primed to provide advanced clinical knowledge and advice across the full spectrum of healthcare settings.

Prospective career paths may include:

• clinical nurse specialist
• clinical research nurse
• clinical nurse consultant
• clinical nurse educator
• nurse unit manager