Nursing Degree

Once you’ve completed a nursing degree, you’ll become a registered nurse. This means that you can go straight into nursing, or that you can complete additional training to specialise in a specific area of healthcare or even look into a Nursing degree online or an Open University Nursing degree.

What to do with a Nursing Degree?

When picturing their career after a nursing degree UK, UK graduates may imagine day to day life as a nurse on an NHS hospital ward, the same with a mental health nursing degree. And certainly, that’s where a great number of brilliant nurses carry out their vocation. But there are also numerous other options to explore.

A nursing degree apprenticeship equips graduates with communication skills, the ability to work under pressure, solve problems, hone their attention to detail and work effectively in a team.

These kinds of qualities are highly sought after in many lines of work: not just in healthcare. After completing an adult nursing degree, it would be possible to enter a graduate programme within a range of fields, if the health system no longer appeals.

And of course, within the health system there are dozens of different kinds of roles to suit every personality and specialism. From a paramedic working night shifts in a busy city to a health informatics nurse working 9-5 in an office, supporting the roll-out of new technologies in healthcare, there is something for every graduate of a nursing degree.

What can you do with a Nursing Degree?

With so many potential pathways, you can narrow down your options by considering what suits you best. When it comes to particular knowledge and interests, hours, location, shift type and pay band, you’ll start to get a clearer idea of what suits you.

For example, a graduate with a mental health nursing degree might choose to work in a psychiatric ward if the continuity of location and colleagues appeals to them, while another mental health degree graduate might opt for a travelling community support role, easing the transition of patients recently discharged from a mental health unit.

After your undergraduate adult nursing degree, you might become a public health nurse, providing training to schools and workplaces on infection control. Or after an Ma or PhD, you could become a nurse trainer, lecturing to prepare the next generation of healthcare professionals.

If you found a particular topic most interesting in your initial nursing degree, you could go on to specialise in that area, such as midwifery, diabetes, sexual health, neurology, paediatrics, or oncology.

There are roles for nurses within business environments, as an occupational health officer; within the army; in schools and universities; in hospices; family planning clinics; phone support; in prisons; GP practices; as health visitors going to the homes of parents with young children; even on cruise ships! Some of these require an extra period of training after the initial nursing degree, but nurses will always be in demand, and that fact provides a wide scope of career opportunities.

How long is a Nursing degree?

A normal Nursing degree or an Adult Nursing degree takes around three years, the same as any normal undergraduate degree, but anyone who is looking to study at a postgraduate level, will study for anywhere between five and seven years.

It can take a little longer if you're studying a part-time nursing degree, although a part time nursing degree might be being done in conjunction with a placement year and there are also shorter degrees if you study a Nursing foundation degree or a 2 year nursing degree, which will have different nursing degree requirements.

What can you do with a nursing degree if you don't want to be a nurse?

A degree in Nursing is useful for people who want to work in a Nursing capacity, but the degree won’t open as many doors outside of the industry you're studying in.

That’s not to say that a nursing degree university isn’t going to open doors for you, far from it. An undergraduate degree in Nursing or an Associate degree in Nursing or a masters degree in Nursing or a Foundation degree in Nursing doesn’t just limit you to working in a hospital as a bed-side Nurse, you can also work in areas like the army too.

Plenty of people look at a veterinary nursing degree or a child nursing degree as well as a good means of work too.

When did nursing become a degree in the UK?

The Nurses Registration Act came into effect as of 1919, but the degree itself became standardised in 2009, which allowed students to be educated at university. This eventually expanded to include a top up nursing degree, a fast track nursing degree and an online nursing degree.

How hard is a nursing degree?

As with any degree, a Nursing degree is only as tough as you make it. If you work hard, a Nursing degree will be easier than if you coast through.

All degrees have their challenges, but as with everything, it’s how you respond to it.

How much does a Nursing degree cost UK?

Most university degrees tend to cost around £9,000-a-year and with a Nursing degree, that is no different.

Nursing degree funding

As with most nursing or medical degrees, there are grants, bursaries and scholarships that are available to you, the main one being the NHS Bursary, which all students can take advantage of.

There are sources of funding, which you can see in our bursary guide, scholarship guide and our grants guide.