DEGREE GUIDE

Nursing

What do Nursing degrees involve?

Nursing degrees teach you how to provide expert care, support, and treatment to patients in a variety of healthcare settings. You will explore key areas such as anatomy and physiology, patient care, pharmacology, public health, and clinical decision-making. These courses help you develop strong practical, problem-solving, and communication skills while learning how to assess patients, administer treatments, and work as part of a multidisciplinary healthcare team. Degrees are offered in Adult Nursing, Children’s Nursing, Mental Health Nursing, and Learning Disability Nursing. With extensive clinical placements in hospitals, GP practices, and community care, you’ll gain hands-on experience that prepares you for a career as a registered nurse in the NHS or private healthcare.

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Foundations of Nursing Practice: Explore the core values of nursing, from ethics and professionalism to teamwork, person-centred care, and communication in diverse settings.

Bioscience for Nursing Practice: Build knowledge of anatomy, physiology, microbiology, and genetics to understand how biological systems affect health and treatment.

Public Health: Learn about health promotion, disease prevention, and the social, political, and global factors that shape population health outcomes.

Common Degree Names

💼 All Nursing degrees include compulsory placements in a range of NHS and community settings.
🌍 Study abroad is available at some universities through short international placements or Erasmus+ exchanges.

BSc (Hons) Adult Nursing
BSc (Hons) Children’s Nursing
BSc (Hons) Mental Health Nursing
BSc (Hons) Learning Disability Nursing
MSci Nursing

Nursing degrees are professionally accredited BSc programmes approved by the NMC. MSci Nursing is a four-year integrated Master’s degree that combines undergraduate and Master’s level study in one course.

Level 3 (A-level / IB Diploma (HL) / Scottish Highers)

Nursing prepares you to care for people across all stages of life, combining scientific knowledge with compassionate practice. Because you'll need to understand how the body works and respond to health challenges, universities look for evidence of both scientific ability and genuine interest in caring for others.

Subjects that strengthen your application:

Biology – essential or strongly preferred by many providers
Psychology, Sociology, or Health & Social Care – useful for understanding people and care
Chemistry or Maths – helpful for safe medicines management and data

✨ Biology plus another science or Health & Social Care is a widely accepted combination. Courses differ in how specific they are about subjects – always check carefully.

Universities may also accept:

BTEC Extended Diplomas in Health and Social Care (being phased out) or Applied Science (being phased out), often with specified science units
BTEC National Extended Certificates or National Diplomas in Health and Social Care or Applied Science, alongside A-levels including a science subject (usually Biology or Chemistry)
T-Levels in Health (widely accepted
IB Career-related Programme (IBCP) with a science or health-related subject (such as Biology, Psychology, or Sociology) at Higher Level among your IB subjects (minimum two, ideally three), alongside your Career-Related Study; a Health and Social Care pathway would be directly relevant

Nursing degrees are approved by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) and lead to professional registration. Subject expectations can differ between universities and specialisms (Adult, Children's, Mental Health, Learning Disability). Always check specific course requirements.

Level 2 Qualifications (GCSE / MYP / National 5)

Most courses ask for:

GCSE English Language, Maths and Science at grade 4/C or above, or equivalents such as National 5s or MYP

📘 Strong English and Maths support clear communication and safe calculations in clinical practice. Separate Sciences are helpful, but Combined Science is widely accepted.

💬 Interviews
Nursing degrees normally require an interview as part of the admissions process. These are often Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs) or panel interviews, designed to explore your values, communication skills, and understanding of the profession.

🔒 DBS Check

An enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check is required before you start clinical placements, as you'll be working directly with patients. Any serious criminal convictions may affect your ability to register with the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

⚕️ Health Check

An occupational health check is required to make sure you can meet the physical demands of the course and placements, including immunisations required for healthcare workers.

🔍 Work Experience
Not formally required by most universities, but strongly encouraged and something you'll be asked about at interview. Experience in any caring or people-facing role helps: volunteering in care homes, hospices, or community settings, working in customer-facing jobs, or supporting people through charities or helplines. Free virtual nursing programmes offer structured insight if an in-person experience is difficult to access. What matters is that you've spent time with people and can reflect on what you learned about yourself and about what good care looks like.

✨ Personal Statement Tips

Why nursing? Whether you're drawn to adult, child, mental health, or learning disability nursing, think about what specifically attracts you to caring for people in that context. If you've volunteered, worked in care settings, or supported someone through illness, reflect on what those experiences taught you - not just that you enjoyed helping, but what you learned about yourself and about what good care looks like. Listening to nurses talk about their work, reading about healthcare challenges, or exploring what different nursing roles involve can show you've thought seriously about this career. Admissions tutors want to see realistic understanding alongside genuine motivation.

If your qualifications don't match the usual entry requirements, there are some other possibilities.

🌱 Foundation Year in Health Sciences or Life Sciences

Many universities offer a foundation year if you don't have the required science subjects or grades. This adds an extra year but leads directly into the full degree.

🎓 Access to HE Diploma (Nursing, Health Professions or Science)

A well-established and widely accepted route into Nursing. Make sure your course includes strong biology and health content, and aim for Distinctions in your science units — Nursing courses are competitive.

💼 Level 3 Apprenticeships

A Healthcare Support Worker apprenticeship carries UCAS tariff points from 2026 and provides directly relevant clinical experience that can support a university application, particularly when combined with a foundation year.

Is this degree right for you?

Members can explore whether this degree fits who they are:

Skills you'd develop and whether they match your strengths
How this aligns with your interests, motivators and values
Career paths and where graduates end up

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Skills you would develop in X degree

Skill Name

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Is this a good fit for you?

Use the tabs to explore the kind of person that this would be a good fit for. Do you share the Interests, Motivations, Values, Work identity and skills that people who thrive in this course tend to have?

Not sure what these things are? Explore your Identity Tree with us first.

Interests that connect well with a Nursing degree

Students who enjoy this degree often share these interests. You don't need to feel strongly about all of them, and interests develop over time. If one or two catch your curiosity, or sound like something you'd like to know more about, that's a good sign.

Health, Illness & How People Are Cared For: This is the core of the degree. You'll learn how to care for people through illness, injury, recovery, and long-term conditions, developing clinical skills in assessment, treatment, and patient support across a range of healthcare settings.

The Mind & Human Behaviour: Understanding psychology and behaviour is woven through nursing practice. You'll study how mental health conditions present, how to support people in psychological distress, and how behaviour affects health outcomes across all branches of nursing.

Society, Communities & How People Live Together: Public health and community nursing are significant strands. You'll explore how social factors like poverty, housing, and inequality shape health, and how nurses work within communities to promote wellbeing and reduce health inequalities.

The Human Body & How It Works: Bioscience underpins nursing practice. You'll study anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology to understand how the body works and how illness affects it, giving you the knowledge needed to assess and care for patients safely.

Students who thrive in a Nursing degree are often motivated by

Movement and Physical Activity

You're energised by work where your body is part of what gets the job done. Training and competing, dancing or performing, coaching others through physical activity, the hands-on side of nursing, midwifery, dentistry or veterinary practice, or the operational work of being a paramedic, firefighter or outdoor instructor: the actual job happens through what you do with your body. You'd rather be the one doing the physical work than the one analysing or organising it from a desk.

Building and Sustaining Relationships

You feel energised by work where the people you work with aren't passing strangers but become known to you across years: clients, patients, students, customers. Forming new connections matters, but the deeper energy comes from the slower work of staying present, remembering the small details, picking up where you left off. You come most alive when someone you've known for years is back in front of you, and you take up the conversation as if no time had passed.

Practical Problem-Solving

You're energised by finding fixes to real-life issues, whether they're mechanical, technological, or social. You're motivated by problems you can see, touch, or experience directly, and you get satisfaction from solutions that work in practice, not just in theory. You'd rather build a prototype than write a report about one.

Decision-Making and Responsibility

You're energised by being the person who makes the call: weighing up options, choosing between difficult alternatives, and standing behind the decision once it's made. You don't need to manage people to feel this; what you want is to be making consequential choices yourself rather than executing other people's. The weight of being the decider, including when things go wrong, feels like a challenge you rise to rather than a burden you avoid.

Helping or Serving Others

You feel driven to support others directly, whether that's providing care, offering help, or doing work that improves the quality of life of people or animals. The satisfaction of knowing your effort made a tangible difference to another living being is what carries you, more than abstract achievement or recognition. You come most alive when the person or animal in front of you is better off because of what you've just done.

What makes Nursing click for the students who love it?

Caring for people at their most unwell is what draws them, and they want to learn how. Placements come early and often, and they take to the bedside: noticing when things start to change, and learning when to act and when to call for help. Much of it is practical and physical, on their feet and thinking fast when a plan changes. They like that good care is built on trust, and that even a short stay can put a worried patient at ease. Being trusted with more by a mentor is a proud moment.

These are the skills that students who love this degree tend to enjoy using. You don't need to be great at them already, but if they sound like you, that's a good sign.

Skill Name

Skills that suit this degree

You don't need to be great at these already — but if you enjoy using them or want to get better at them, that's a good sign.

Do people tend to open up to you, even about difficult or personal things?
Do you notice when someone's struggling, even when they're trying to hide it?
Are you good at thinking about how you handled a situation afterwards - what went well and what you'd do differently?
Do you like the idea of being responsible for a team and making sure things run smoothly?

Careers a Nursing degree could lead you to

Nursing

What do Nursing degrees involve?

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Common Degree Names

Is this degree right for you?

Skills you would develop in X degree

Skill Name

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Is this a good fit for you?

Careers a Nursing degree could lead you to

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