Nursing Associate FdSc draft

Program Overview

This two-year Foundation Degree program prepares students to become compassionate and competent nursing associates. It covers professional and academic benchmarks, ensuring graduates can provide safe and ethical care within their parameters of practice. The program emphasizes person-centered care, research, and leadership, and includes extensive practical learning in healthcare settings. Graduates are eligible to register as nursing associates and may pursue further education in nursing or related fields.

Program Outline

The program aims to produce compassionate, competent, and confident nursing associates. The course covers all relevant professional and academic benchmarks, ensuring graduates can provide safe, ethical, and respectful care while acting under their parameters of practice. The program is dynamic, interactive, and places the needs of service users and their families at its center. The Programme Team is committed to supporting students in realizing their potential to become compassionate, person-centered nursing associates, a new profession in the health and social care workforce.

Outline:

Year 1 (Level 4):

• Key themes:
• Professional and academic lifelong learning
• Public health
• Person-centered care
• Applied anatomy, physiology, and integrated pharmacology
• Practice Learning

Year 2 (Level 5):

• Modules:
• Enhancing Professionalism and Academic Study Skills (Compulsory):
• Content:
Transition to level 5; review of personal learning style, personal responsibility; SWOT analysis of academic writing and study skills; searching for evidence; research awareness; review professional development, lifelong learning; critical reflection, self-awareness; self-management and motivation; digital literacy and technology; problem solving. Preparation for employment; CV building, applications, and portfolio development. Review of the Professional regulations: Nursing and Midwifery Council, other regulatory bodies, codes of practice and professional regulation; consent; Role of the nursing associate as a role model; parameters of practice; Revalidation; Accountability. Review of Probity: Professional morals values and beliefs; equality and diversity; cultural multiplicity, spirituality; ethics and law and vulnerable individuals as service users; service user and carer involvement; rights, dignity, respecting diversity. Critical Reflection: self-awareness of own values and personal qualities; beliefs and values about health, professional boundaries; personal resilience, wellbeing and management of stress; kindness, compassion, and respect. Learning from others; role of mentor, supervisor, lived experience connector; giving, receiving, and acting on feedback. Advanced Communication: review and reflection of communication strategies to date including effective communication to others and in differing environments; advanced techniques and strategies for communication (conflict and complaints); role modelling appropriate behavior, methods, and language (to meet the needs of a variety of service users, elder speak, tone, delivery, word choice); non-verbal and verbal.
• Aims: To enhance and advance the students' socialization of professional values and responsibilities of the nursing associate role.
• Medicine Management and Administration (Compulsory):
• Content:
Drug and medicines acts: role and function of bodies that regulate and ensure safety and effectiveness, legislation that underpins practice, ethical frameworks; Individual legal responsibility, personal accountability, regulatory requirements. Statutory requirements in relation to mental health, mental capacity, children and young people and medicines, National Service Frameworks. Use of medicines including: risks and benefits; controlled drugs; storage of medicines; administration of medicines under patient-specific directions and patient group directives, self-administration; the use of medical devices; concordance; Rationale for invasive and non-invasive practice; commonly recognized approaches to symptom management, relaxation, distraction, and lifestyle advice. Pharmacological considerations including: Impact physiological state of individuals on drug responses and safety to include; older adult, child, pregnant and breastfeeding women, significant pathologies (renal and hepatic); Pharmacodynamics and Pharmacokinetics; Management of adverse drug events, drug reactions, prescribing, and administration errors, side effects, repercussions in terms of individuals, carers, families, teams, departments, and organizations; The management of long-term conditions; Public health. Communication and record keeping: in a variety of settings including acting upon concerns; Support for individuals’ families/carers receiving medical treatment. Numeracy and drug calculations.
• Aims: To develop a comprehensive understanding of medicines management as a nursing associate within a variety of healthcare settings.
• Enhancing Care Delivery Across Health and Care Settings (Compulsory):
• Content:
Socio economic factors determinants of health: Impact of illness and disability on the service user, family, and carers; family history and other factors; population health and public health priorities. Structures and functions of the human body: multi-pathology and related conditions through the lifespan; renal; Hepatic; musculoskeletal; skin; urinary and digestive system. Physiological and Psychological explanations of a variety of health and health behaviours across the age and ability continuum; common cancer; injury and falls, frailty, wound care; psychotic disorders; self-harm; suicide; service user perspectives. Review of effective health and wellbeing promotion activities: behaviour and lifestyle choice; health policy strategies and care pathways; local and national public health interventions; brief interventions; contribution to education and promotion of health and wellbeing of individuals, families, and or carers. Applied Pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics.
• Aims: To advance the students’ conceptualisation of care delivery enabling them to work across a range of healthcare settings and with a diverse group of clients appropriate to their parameters of practice.
• Research, Development, and Innovation (Compulsory):
• Content:
Research awareness: importance of research, innovation, and audit in improving quality of patient safety and care; role of nursing associate in supporting others and adoption of innovative practice and new technologies. Evidence related to healthcare practice: search for evidence and use of databases; research governance and statutory and advisory regulatory bodies; policies and frameworks; service user choice; ethical and legal considerations; challenges to changing practice; audit and quality assurance. Service improvement: search for evidence: use of audit data to inform practice: PDSA cycle; change management theory; analytical skills in a research/audit/service improvement context; articulation and presentation of service improvement. The research process: audit and research methods; service user involvement; use of research and audit information to interpret and apply new knowledge. Methods and techniques of dissemination: interpretation of results; information pathways; peer and user perspectives.
• Aims: To develop the students' ability to contextualize evidence, research, and audit into healthcare practice.
• Leadership, Team Working, and Learning in Practice (Compulsory):
• Content:
Supporting learning: teaching role; learning and teaching strategies; role modelling peer supervision; skills of teaching and facilitation, supervision. Preparation for a teaching role: preceptorship; mentorship; mentorship role; role modelling and coaching as applied to healthcare. Transition to nursing associate role: leadership role and competencies; change management; time management; prioritisation and delegation, leadership styles and models, role modelling, supporting peers; embedding nursing associate role into workplace cultures and philosophy. Team working: respect and values of team, development of team environment, MDT, culture of cares.
• Aims: The trainee nursing associate will be able to articulate the principles underpinning leadership, team working, and learning in practice.
As part of the transition to nursing associate, the module aims to develop their leadership, team working, and teaching potential.
• Nursing Associate Work Based Learning (Compulsory):
• Content:
The content of the module will form the basis of theory which will be applied to practice in the workplace. The translation of skills acquired in an academic mode into one which is appropriate to employment is also part of the process in which the student will engage. Discussion between University tutors and students will facilitate the realization and articulation of this content with reference to the particular project/activities selected which may include: Critical reflection on progress as a student nursing associate: review of PAR: successes and challenges. Development of a learning contract: SMART objectives. Experimental learning in the workplace. Review and evaluation of objectives: self-analysis; peer and supervisor review. Domains and parameters of practice for nursing associates. SWOT analysis of effectiveness. Application to practice: programme domains; parameters of practice.
• Aims: To facilitate the student to apply knowledge and skills to activities that the student will undertake in their workplace.
To extend the student’s ability to relate theory and practice and to translate and reflect on the knowledge and skills they have gained into terms intelligible to an employer.

Assessment:

• Assessment methods:
• Portfolios
• Learning logs
• Practical examinations
• Practice-based assessment
• Case studies
• Assignments
• Practical Learning Assessment: The assessment of practical learning is via the Practice Assessment Document (PAD) with the support of a practice assessor/supervisor.

Teaching:

• Teaching Methods:
• Blocks of theory and practice: When in theory, students are based at University Centre Warrington and have a mixture of in-person learning (seminars, practical sessions in the simulation suite) supported by online learning.
• Online learning activities: Access to taught material and wider reading via the University's Portal system.
• Placement: Students work 37.5 hours a week on placement, alongside practice assessors and supervisors who support them in achieving the proficiencies required to register as a nursing associate.

Careers:

• Job Prospects:
• The overarching aim of the course is to facilitate the development of the Nursing Associate.
• Some students have completed this program and utilized the credits (240) to progress onto other degree programs, including accreditation of prior learning onto 18 months of the Bachelor of Nursing degree program at the University of Chester.
• Progression Options:
• Adult Nursing BN (Hons)
• Careers Service: The University has an award-winning Careers and Employability service which provides a variety of employability-enhancing experiences: through the curriculum, through employer contact, tailored group sessions, individual information, advice, and guidance.

Other:

• This course is not open to international students.
• Successful candidates will be required to undergo checks with regards to their suitability to practice, including a self-declaration form and a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.
• Placement: On this course, students will spend time on placement where they will apply what they have learned to real scenarios in healthcare settings.
• Practice learning is supported in specialist areas of practice by a Practice Assessor/Mentor.

Tuition Fees and Payment Information:

• Our full-time undergraduate tuition fees for Home students entering University in 2024/25 are £9,250 a year, or £1,540 per 20-credit module for part-time study.
• The University may increase these fees at the start of each subsequent year of your course in line with inflation at that time, as measured by the Retail Price Index.
These fee levels and increases are subject to any necessary government, and other regulatory, approvals.
• Students from the UK, Isle of Man, Guernsey, Jersey and the Republic of Ireland are treated as Home students for tuition fee purposes.
• Students from countries in the European Economic Area and the EU starting in or after the 2021/22 academic year will pay International Tuition Fees.
• Students who have been granted Settled Status may be eligible for Home Fee Status and if eligible will be able to apply for Tuition Fee Loans and Maintenance Loans.
• Students who have been granted Pre-settled Status may be eligible for Home Fee Status and if eligible will be able to apply for Tuition Fee Loans.
• Irish Nationals living in the UK or Republic of Ireland are treated as Home students for Tuition Fee Purposes.