PGDip Community Nursing Specialist Practice Qualification (General Practice Nursing)

University of Wolverhampton

Students accessing this programme will be from a wide range of areas within the West Midlands. Networking between students is encouraged and considered to be a strength of the programme as evidenced in previous student course evaluations. To allow for collaborative engagement, the programme is run concurrently with the PGDip Community Nursing Specialist Practice -District Nursing, Specialist Community Public Health (SCPHN) Health Visiting and School Nursing programmes.As specialists in community nursing District Nursing (DN) and General Practice Nursing (GPN) hold similar generalist skills and support the delivery of healthcare within the same practice population in primary care and it is therefore important that they learn and share ideas together within modules. This is important as their roles support the shift of care from secondary to primary care and hence there is a crossover within certain field specific modules.Each discipline has specific differences that can complement each other’s learning for example DN’s work is more focused on care of the housebound, elderly, vulnerable and disabled people while GPN have experiences to share in aspects of screening, long-term condition management, triage, and urgent care across the life course.Within the shared theoretical perspective DN’s and GPN’s alignment is in understanding each other’s roles and responsibilities that can be seen in policy and guidelines of practice. While the two disciplines share debates and discussions, they are able to promote individual learning which is field specific in their health assessment module where they are required to present a specific case study relevant to their practice area.In clinical practice students will be required to undertake minimum of 5 alternative placement experiences in order to enable them to experience the breadth of health care services relating to their field of practice. This provides an opportunity for collaborative working across multi-professionals that enhance the understanding of differing roles within healthcare.In addition, students will be able to undertake the independent and supplementary prescribing qualification as part of the award leading to an additional annotation on the NMC register on successful completion of the award.This award can be studied 1-year full time or part-time over 2 years offering flexibility in study that supports sustainability of the primary care General Practice workforce.The programme also benefits from:A designated full-time member of staff who acts as course leader and who has expertise in the specific field of practice that the student is studying and as well as having experience of working as a practitioner in the same specialist area.In addition, the course leader and course team have engaged in research, published books, chapters and journal articles within the subject area, act as external examiners for other HEI’s and are members of national professional groups and forums bringing a depth of knowledge and experience.Service user involvement to ensure that the experiences of patients and their carers/families are integrated into the programme. Links and knowledge from local, national, and international research initiatives undertaken in the Institute of Health and the wider University research.Innovation on the programme is strongly encouraged and several students have gone on to win regional and national awards for work initiated on previous programmes.Course design was developed in close collaboration with key learning partners, previous students and stakeholders across local regions adding an experiential perspective and enhancing the student journey.