University of Hertfordshire website
This page adds to the information that can be found on the herts.ac.uk nursing associates page.
This programme aims to:
- Provide a learning environment that enables the student to become a proficient, confident, safe and accountable Nursing Associate equipped with the necessary knowledge, skills, capabilities and value-bases to achieve fitness for practice, purpose, academic award and professional standing.
- Provide the knowledge, values and behaviours to enable students in a wide range of roles and settings to provide direct quality person centred care to patients, families and carers within communities.
- Support the development of new roles underpinned by a strong awareness of their boundaries of competence and expertise.
- Enable students to contribute to and manage their own learning by effectively engaging with the evidence and research literature, reflecting on practice and continuing life-long learning.
- Create opportunities for progression into a pre-registration nursing programme of study.
This programme will prepare students to practice in an array of healthcare arenas. The public and the profession expect Nursing Associates to act in a professional manner that ensure high standards of care while treating service users and their carers with dignity and respect. This programme has been designed to prepare future registered Nursing Associates who will value the teams they work with and the service users they care for. It is envisaged that graduates from the programme will be able to work effectively in a dynamic healthcare system and will continue to develop personally and professionally. The programme will therefore ensure that those qualifying are fit for practice, purpose and a professional standing. The programme has been constructed to meet the Nursing and Midwifery Council standards of proficiency for nursing associates. (NMC 2018) and the Nursing Associate (NMC 2018) Higher Apprenticeship standard.
Who is this programme for?
This undergraduate programme is for students who currently work in health care and who wish to undertake this exciting nursing role which is offered at Foundation Degree level. Completion of the Foundation Degree offers the supporting education required for Nursing Associate posts in both acute and community-based health care settings. These Nursing Associate roles work as part of the wider health and social care team and have direct contact with patients, service users or clients providing high quality and compassionate care.
What makes are Nursing Associate different to a Healthcare Support Worker
They will work at a level above that of healthcare support workers and have a more in-depth understanding about factors that influence health and ill-health (e.g. anatomy and physiology). The Nursing Associate role will bridge the gap between Healthcare Assistants and Registered Nurses. Nursing Associates will work as part of the multidisciplinary team within adult, child, learning disability and mental health nursing. Nursing Associates will work alongside Registered Nurses and be an integral part of the multidisciplinary team. Graduates from this programme will be eligible to be registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council as registered Nursing Associates.
Future career pathways
There will be a pathway to become a Registered Nurse (subject to meeting the relevant entry criteria and employer support) for graduates from this programme who wish to undertake further study.
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Placements
During your 2-year course you will have six placement blocks. The NMC state that you must complete at least two substantial placements (totalling 675 hours) in settings other than in your primary place of employment. We allocate you a minimum of 6 placement blocks totalling the 1125 practice hours required to register with the NMC.
We provide practice learning opportunities that allow students to develop and meet the Standards of proficiency for nursing associates to deliver safe and effective care, to a diverse range of people, across the lifespan and in a variety of settings and meet the holistic needs of people of all ages
To achieve this, we will place you in a range of clinical settings so that you have every opportunity to complete the proficiencies required to meet the NMC standards. This does mean that you will need to travel to get these experiences and some of these may fall in school holidays.
Nursing associate students are not required to have placements in each field of nursing, but should, through their education programme, benefit from experience of children and adults, and patients/service users with mental health conditions and learning disabilities and understand the most significant factors to be aware of when providing care to different types of service user.
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Testimonials from students
"The course has helped me to achieve my qualification and I will recommend it to other people."
"It is a fantastic programme. I have learnt so much and I am a better SNA for it"
"The nursing associate programme has been great. It has given me the opportunity to create my career pathway which I truly enjoyed."
"I would recommend the programme to anyone who would want to improve their skills whilst working"
"Its been hard but I have enjoyed it and I have been well supported"
Year 2 students - Sept 19 cohort
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