BSc (Hons) Mental Health Nursing

Mental Health Nursing aims to provide support and care for vulnerable individuals across the lifespan to meet their individual needs, combining nursing values with contemporary knowledge, expertise, communication, and interpersonal skills to form strong therapeutic relationships.
Our course is designed to give you the professional and academic qualifications you need to register with the Nursing and Midwifery Council and practice as a mental health nurse. This degree will provide the basis for your future career choices enable you to work as a mental health nurse in a variety of settings including inpatient and community services and specialist centres of excellence such as Eating Disorders, Memory Assessment, Drug & Alcohol or Forensic and Prison Services.

You will spend half of your time in clinical practice-based placements working alongside highly experienced professionals, developing your skills and confidence in supporting people who experience a variety of mental health conditions across the lifespan. For students who might wish to undertake placements closer to home, if you study at the Lancaster campus you may have the opportunity to undertake placements with the Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, Blackpool Teaching Hospitals, Lancashire and South Cumbria Foundation Trust, and University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay.

The other half of your studies is through academic learning, where you explore the fundamental principles of nursing and especially mental health nursing, alongside the biological, psychological, social, cultural, legal, ethical and political aspects of working in a 21st century healthcare services.

Placements will be across the sector including both NHS and private/voluntary- sector provision. In your second year, you will have the opportunity to arrange an enrichment placement that provides you with the opportunity to develop your learning which could involve national or international work. Our academic staff has extensive professional expertise that they will share with you to help develop your knowledge and understanding of mental health nursing at university. You will develop your independent thinking and problem-solving skills. Your learning will include the use of taught sessions and discussions, lectures with our academic staff, guest speakers and experts by experience. There will also be opportunity to develop clinical and mandatory skills, scenario-based experiences within a purpose built hospital wards environment, attend workshops and conferences and be part of experiential learning through computerised simulation and interactive immersion room.