Starting a Career in Nursing

Whether you're coming to nursing straight from a university degree or you've decided to enter the profession at a later stage in your life, you'll find it a challenging but rewarding career. Nurses are essential to the health service at all levels, and the perception that they spend all their time in hospitals is wrong: nurses can be found running clinics, filling executive leadership roles, in residential homes and in the pharmaceutical industry.

If you want to work as a nurse in the NHS, you must be registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council: this means you will need to complete a degree in nursing. Plenty of universities around the UK offer nursing degrees, which offer a different experience to the majority of courses, as usually half the programme is devoted to supervised placements in local hospitals or community services. This means that while you'll still be reading plenty of textbooks and completing exams, there's also the opportunity to start gaining practical skills and experience from the outset.

When you start a degree in nursing, you will choose whether to specialise in adult, children's, mental health or learning disability nursing. You will normally need a minimum of five GCSEs at grade C or above plus two A levels or equivalent. If you have worked or currently work as a healthcare assistant, you may be able to use this experience to support your application for a degree course. Some trusts also run apprenticeships and cadet schemes that offer the opportunity to work in wards, reception areas, pharmacies, medical records and more.

Once you have qualified as a nurse, you'll find plenty of opportunities to work in a variety of fields, depending on your training and specialisations. Adult nursing probably offers the broadest range of work settings, from hospitals and health centres to nursing homes and community services. Many nurses who choose the adult route decide to specialise in a further area of the profession - for instance, school nursing, women's health, cancer care or accident and emergency.

However, there are plenty of other paths and areas to work in. You may want to pursue a career in mental health care, working with psychologists, psychiatrists and GPs to help people with personality and psychological disorders. Alternatively, you may wish to specialise in children's care, spending time with people from infanthood to their late teens, or in neonatal care helping to care for sick and premature babies.

Whatever route you think is right for you, be sure to find out as much as you can about the nursing profession before you start applying for courses - a lot has changed in nursing in the last few years, and you might find new opportunities that had never occurred to you have now become available!

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