Student nurses can now study leadership

Nurses will now be able to study Leadership as one of four specialist degree pathways in The Open University’s post-qualifying nursing degree.

The BSc (Honours) Nursing Practice, first launched at the OU in 2007, has just been reconfigured to bring it into line with latest health service priorities.

The BSc is designed so that registered nurses who want to develop their skills and top-up their qualifications to degree level can study part-time, while they continue to work.

It’s been developed in response to the modernisation of nurse education and the development of new career pathways, which mean that nurses are increasingly taking on new and demanding roles and exercising leadership in continually changing environments.

 “The programme is work-based, so students can bring into their learning the experience they have accrued and things they are currently working on,” says Professor Jan Draper, who is Director of Nursing at the OU.

“With the revised programme we have re-branded the specialist pathways and also divided the programme into longer chunks, making it more cost-effective for students.”

As well as Leadership, students have the option to follow pathways in Public Health, Child Health or Older People.

Those who are already studying for the BSc in Nursing Practice will have the option to either continue on the old programme, or switch to the new one.

Currently you don’t to be qualified to degree level to be a registered nurse but this will change from 2013, when all new entrants to the profession will be required to have a degree.

This will put more pressure on nurses who are already qualified to top-up their qualifications, Jan believes. “For those qualified nurses who don’t have a degree, to get one will be an imperative. Otherwise they will find they don’t have the same qualification level as newly-qualified nurses, even though they have more clinical experience.”

Some nurses are supported on the programme through their health authority but others enrol as individuals. RCN and Unison members are eligible for a 10 per cent discount.

For more information see the BSc (Honours) Nursing Practice web page.