PgDip Specialist Practice District Nursing

Course summary

• Enhance and develop your leadership and management skills.
• Foster excellence in practice to meet the challenges involved in complex care provision.
• Develop detailed knowledge and meet the Standards for Specialist Practice.
• Develop personal resilience as an autonomous and independent decision maker.

Aimed at students who can demonstrate their ability to study at the required level, this course helps you to extend and develop a critical understanding of the advances in district nursing practice. You will learn how to maximise relationships with key partners and coordinate care for people in their own homes and other environments.

How you learn

All our courses are designed around a set of key principles based on engaging you with the world, collaborating with others, challenging you to think in new ways, and providing you with a supportive environment in which you can thrive.

You will be allocated a supervisor to support you. Communication may be face to face, via email, via telephone or Skype.

You will be required to submit a proposal for the study, which is reviewed by the supervisor and a second reviewer who in time acts as the second marker for the dissertation.

While masters dissertation projects may be very diverse and may combine different elements, five broad types are defined. These definitions should help you choose the most appropriate proposal to inform the dissertation project. They are

• research projects
• evaluation projects
• service development projects
• advanced professional practice projects
• theoretical or literature based projects

Future careers

Further opportunities, usually with experience or further study include

• leading and managing district nurse teams
• leading and managing integrated care teams
• working in other areas, such as general practice, independent sector, voluntary and charitable organisations
• in complex case management
• as a community matron

On completion we encourage you to continue your professional career development. This can be achieved by undertaking our MSc Specialist Practice District Nursing. Additional funding is required for you to go on and complete a further 60 credit dissertation module for the award of MSc.

Accreditation

Successfully completing the course allows you to be on the NMC register as a

• specialist practitioner – district nursing
• • community practitioner – nurse prescriber

To complete the course you typically need at least 120 credits at level 6 (or pending results prior to the course starting); current registration on part one (nursing) of the Nursing and Midwifery Council-s (NMC) register; normally at least one year's post-registration experience; to be working as a community staff nurse working in a community team; self-declaration of good health and character as required by the NMC; to have successfully applied for a student district nurse NHS training post; to have a sponsoring health care organisation and be employed by the NHS for the duration of the course.