PG DIP COMMUNITY SPECIALIST PRACTITIONER � COMMUNITY CHILDREN�S NURSING (Subject to Validation) Postgraduate Diploma

Throughout this Postgraduate Diploma you will experience a range of creative and challenging learning opportunities and different environments. This will enable you to grow, personally and professionally, within safe and supportive spaces.

This Postgraduate Diploma has a variety of innovative and unique learning and teaching strategies including opportunity to share learning with students in other community nursing specialist programmes, enabling you to develop and enhance advanced communication and interpersonal skills, through the contemporary socio-political landscape and collaborative working of Specialist Community Public Health Nurses. The programme structure and content has been co-produced by extensive stakeholder and public engagement, which includes, students, employers, people who use public health services, and practice partners.

In addition, we’ll use the supported online learning environment to enhance your digital skills within practice, and to help you understand and promote the use of digital technology as a solution within care settings.

To achieve the Specialist Community Public Health Nurse standards of Proficiency for Specialist Community Public Health Nursing you will undertake a range of formative and summative assessments across all modules. Formative assessment will be an on-going key feature of the programme, via student led action learning sessions, one to one discussions and e-learning. Formative assessment will provide constructive feedback to help your development for summative assessment.

The NMC standards for this postgraduate diploma programme are the standards for specialist community public health nursing, all applicants will already be registered nurses or midwives as this is a post registration programme.

You will be supported throughout your time at Northumbria by a truly remarkable team of highly experienced academics and practitioners, you will be allocated a Practice Assessor, Practice Supervisor and Academic Assessor (Nursing and Midwifery Council 2023) all of whom are experts within your field of Specialist Community Public Health Nursing practice. During your practice learning you will also complete a minimum of five days in other areas to wider develop your public health knowledge.

You’ll benefit from our Personal Tutor system, Learning Leaders programme, and close partnership working with Practice Supervisors and Assessors, all of which play a part in ensuring you meet University and NMC expectations. We will all coach you towards independent learning and personal and professional achievements, as you journey towards graduation and registration.

At our base on Coach Lane Campus you will benefit from state-of-the-art teaching and practice facilities, and from being immersed in an environment dedicated to the study of healthcare.

Our innovative Clinical Skill Centre replicates a range of nursing environments and situations. Its virtual reality equipment, high fidelity Simulated Mannequins (SimMan and SimBaby), and immersive technologies will allow you to practise skills, challenge your learning and develop confidence in your clinical ability – all within a safe environment.

If you are an international student, you will have access to Academic Language Skills (ALS) sessions to help you develop your academic language, writing and study skills. These sessions will run throughout the course.  

Research is vital to the evolution of healthcare, and this postgraduate course will equip you to play a valuable role in generating new knowledge within the nursing profession.

Research-rich learning will be embedded throughout the course, culminating in a dissertation that will allow you to explore a topic of your choice in significant depth. You will have the option to conduct an empirical study, undertaking hands-on research supported by tutors with specialist knowledge in that area.

Our academic staff have extensive research experience across nursing, midwifery and health, where our work informs policy and practice to improve quality, safety and effectiveness. Our areas of research strength include Ageing, Later Life & Long-term Conditions (ALL), Healthcare Organisation, Practice Improvement & Economics (HOPE), and Healthcare Education and Learning for Practice and Patient Safety (HELPPS).

This course will lead directly to Registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), under the new Standards, which will allow you to start and quickly progress in your nursing career.

The NMC’s ‘Future Nurse’ change programme seeks to drive forward changes in the profession, and we have embedded research, leadership and advanced practice strands throughout the course to equip you to play a key role in those future developments. 

After successfully completing this programme, you will be recognised as a Specialist Community Public Health Nurse, on the third part of the Nursing and Midwifery Council register. You will also receive a Postgraduate Diploma from Northumbria University.

At Northumbria we have long-standing strong relationships with our partnership Trusts, and we have developed this new course in close collaboration with them as well as with a wide range of experts by experience. This will ensure that the course prepares you for practice in exactly the way employers are seeking, so that you benefit from our consistently high employment rates.