Specialist Community Public Health Nursing BSc (Hons)

Your learning will be 50% theory and 50% practice, and both components are equally weighted for assessment purposes. You will normally be sponsored or seconded by an NHS Trust who provide a practice placement and a Practice Teacher / Mentor who will support your 50% learning in practice. They work in collaboration with the academic team and have a key role in facilitating your practice learning and opportunities, providing support, supervision and guidance in practice to ensure the award outcomes for practice are met.
The Professional Practice of Specialist Community Public Health Nursing – Health Visiting / School Nursing (30) credits
Working Together to Safeguard and Protect Children
Life course Development and Intervention with Children and Young People, their Families and Carers
Leadership
Health Promotion Project Planning
Appraising the Clinical Evidence
Community Practitioner Nurse Prescribing (V100)

The Specialist Community Public Health Nursing operates within the Lifelong Learning (undergraduate) scheme except where the requirements of the professional bodies require a difference. They are therefore delivered over an extended academic year of three terms full time or six terms part time (NMC 2004), with 50% theory and 50% practice elements.
The teaching and learning strategies are designed to give equal value to theory and practice. They are planned to ensure that students meet the NMC (2004) Standards of Proficiency for Specialist Community Public Health Nursing (SCPHN) education and practice.
Teaching, learning and assessment strategies, have been designed to enable students to achieve an honours degree level of knowledge and skills which are directly applicable to the student's specialist area of work, public health nursing, and specified route of either Health Visiting or School Nursing.

The learning strategies within this award therefore include:

Theoretical learning: (50%) 113 days
Is facilitated mainly by the relevant module leader, but may also include other specialist visiting lecturers or clinicians where this enhances the module delivery.
Students participate in lead lectures and discussions, action learning sets, practical exercises, lead seminars, problem-based learning and the presentation case studies.
Teaching and learning strategies ensure that throughout the programme leadership knowledge and skills will be developed.
Inter professional learning: There is the opportunity for students to share learning and broaden their theoretical and clinical knowledge base with peers completing the undergraduate award of Specialist Community Public Health Nursing and students on other degree pathways. These students may be from a variety of clinical specialities or other disciplines including social workers.
Blackboard virtual learning environment (vle): Learning is supported by the VLE environment - `Black Board'.

It provides access to a whole range of module materials including, announcements, timetables, assignment briefs, module handbook, student activity briefings, session presentations, handouts, and evidence based internet resources. It provides an adjutant to classroom based learning and also a medium to enable synthesis of theoretical and practice based learning.
Independent learning is facilitated through activities such as directed reading and practical activities, and through practice link work in Blackboard. A key feature of the learning experience is the application of modes of teaching and learning which are aimed to challenge and extend knowledge, link theory to practice and develop transferable skills.

Service user and care involvement in teaching, learning and assessment: Service user involvement in the Specialist Community Public Health Nursing programme is a growing aspect of teaching learning and assessment.

Practice Learning (50%) 113 days
Students have protected time to undertake this learning in practice. An individual designated Practice Teacher / Mentor is assigned to each student for the duration of the programme to provide practice education and learning support in placement. They play a major role in enabling students to meet the NMC (2004) SCPHN proficiency standards of education and practice within the practice environment and have responsibility for signing off as proficiency in practice (NMC 2008). The Practice Teacher / Mentor is selected by the sponsoring Trust and the placement is audited by the Faculty of Health to ensure it provides an appropriate environment and opportunities for learning, through the clinical educational audit processes