Nursing (Mental Health)
Prepare for a fulfilling nursing career in mental health, with practical clinical experience throughout your degree. Combine theory with hands-on placements, providing holistic care to individuals with mental health needs.
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Key Course Details
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UCAS Code
B704
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Start Date
September
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Location
Pontypridd
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Campus Code
A
Fees
Home students
£9,535*
International students
£16,200*
- Full-time fees are per year. Part-time fees are per 20 credits.
This degree will help you become a confident mental health nurse, blending theoretical knowledge with essential clinical experience. Learn key skills in mental health care, therapeutic relationships, public health, and clinical placements in clinical settings, ensuring comprehensive, person-centred care.
DESIGNED FOR
This course is ideal for those passionate about mental health support. Get practical experience and vital skills in therapeutic relationships, assessment, and crisis intervention. Enjoy personal tutoring, diverse placements, and strong NHS links, setting you up for continual career progression.
Accredited By
- Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC)
Career paths
- Mental health nurse
- CAMHS nurse
- Psychiatric liaison nurse
- Perinatal mental health nurse
- Dementia care specialist nurse
Skills taught
- Informed decision-making
- Person-centred care
- Leading and managing quality care
- Risk assessment and management
- Clinical skills
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Course Highlights
Module Overview
Split evenly between theory and hands-on practice, this three-year course prepares you to confidently handle a range of mental health issues. Graduating makes you eligible to join the NMC (2018) professional register, ready for a rewarding career in nursing.
In Year 1, you’ll build foundational knowledge in mental health nursing, focusing on care, communication, and human development. You'll also gain practical experience in clinical settings, applying what you've learned.
The Essentials of Nursing Practice
Your introduction to nursing essentials, including professional approaches, physiology, social science and the interaction between mental and physical health.
Assessing Needs and Creating Therapeutic Opportunities
Understand the processes and techniques of person-centred assessment, develop your clinical skills and be introduced to key principles.
Promoting Health and Wellbeing*
Study holistic health across nursing fields, family roles, global health perspectives and promotion strategies. Explore health inequalities, legislation and safeguarding.
Developing Confidence in Practice: Practice 1
Learn practice assessment, reflective practice and safe medication administration. Develop your skills with 787.5 hours of hands-on experience.
*This module can be studied 100% through the medium of Welsh
In the second year, you’ll deepen your knowledge of mental health nursing, focusing on complex care, ethical decision-making, and recovery approaches. You'll be better equipped to handle more challenging clinical scenarios.
Enhancing Assessment & Evidence-Based Interventions
Build your abilities in assessment, diagnosis and therapeutic interventions. Learn about collaborating across specialisms and person-centred care.
Professional, Legal & Ethical Issues in Nursing
Explore professional, legal and ethical concepts and principles and the right to health care. Become politically aware and build influencing skills.
Informed Decision-Making in the Practice Environment
Develop assertiveness and professional courage. Understand ethical approaches and decision-making principles like mental capacity.
Evidence-Based Practice: Evaluating Care within the Context of Practice
Deepen understanding of evidence, quality and continuous improvement. Explore research methodologies and evaluation approaches.
The final year hones your leadership and autonomous practice skills, preparing you for registration. You’ll explore advanced topics such as managing change, leading teams, and promoting mental health on a wider scale.
Advancing Knowledge, Skills & Therapeutic Interventions
Advance your skills in caring for people with complex conditions, pathophysiology, preparing for prescribing and communication strategies.
Leading and Managing Quality Care Across Settings
Develop leadership skills. Consider policy change impacts on care delivery. Study resource management, shared decision-making and accountability.
The Nurse as an Educator
Expand your influencing and feedback skills. Practice presentation skills and develop accessible approaches to teaching and learning.
Becoming a Proficient Practitioner
Become ready for registration by understanding the principles of lifelong learning. Consolidate communication, supervising and nursing skills.
Course Highlights
How you’ll learn
Your mental health nursing training combines on-campus study days, block placements, and private study.
The blended learning approach includes lectures, workshops, and interactive online sessions.
You’ll spend 50% of your time on placements, where you'll be assessed through written assignments, presentations, clinical practice assessments, and portfolios.
This mix ensures you develop essential mental health nursing skills, with close support from tutors and practice supervisors.
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Teaching staff
At USW, you'll benefit from learning under the guidance of experienced professionals, including mental health nurses and allied experts, whose practical insights make your education directly relevant to the field.
The open-door policy ensures you receive personalised support while visiting lecturers from specialist areas like addiction and forensic mental health provide diverse perspectives. This inclusive and supportive environment enhances your learning experience, helping you build valuable connections and gain a wide-ranging understanding of mental health tailored to your future career aspirations.
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Placements and work experience
Clinical placements are essential to your mental health nursing education.
You'll gain hands-on experience in various mental health settings, including community care, inpatient units, and crisis intervention teams, with potential travel, shifts, and weekend work.
In your third year, you can take an elective placement in a specialist area, either in the UK or abroad.
Each placement is supported by a qualified practice supervisor who will guide you through the shift patterns and clinical duties, meaning you receive comprehensive, practical training.
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Facilities
Our Clinical Simulation Centre offers cutting-edge facilities for mental health nursing students.
You’ll engage in high-fidelity simulations that replicate real-life scenarios, such as risk assessment, communication in crises, and de-escalation techniques.
The Centre includes hospital bays, paediatric and maternity units, an intensive care environment, an emergency department with an ambulance simulator, and a home setting flat.
This range of simulated environments means you develop confidence and competence in patient care before entering clinical practice.
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Ranked top 20 in the UK for General Nursing (Guardian League Table 2023)
94% of students are in work or further study fifteen months after graduating from USW.
Ranked top 20 in the UK for General Nursing (Guardian League Table 2023)
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ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
Typical qualification requirements:
- A Level: BBB to exclude General Studies
- Welsh BACC: Grade B and BB at A Level to exclude General Studies
- BTEC: BTEC Extended Diploma Distinction Distinction Merit
- Access to HE: Must complete 60 credits overall with at least 45 at level 3 and 15 at Level 2. Of the 45 credits at level 3, you will need a minimum of 24 Distinctions, 18 Merits and 3 passes.
Please note: Entry to this course is closed for September 2024, but is open for April 2025 entry. If applicants apply via Clearing it will be for April 2025 not September 2024.
Application advice:
We strongly advise applicants to take advantage of the advice available online, from demonstrating you have the relevant qualifications or experience, tips on writing your personal statement to advice on preparing for interview, we have a wealth of support and guidance available to applicants to ensure you are able to demonstrate that you have what it takes and make your application the best it can be. Please read our application advice.
Additional requirements include:
- All applicants are required to attend an interview. For further support on preparing for interview and what to expect at interview, please read our application advice.
- One satisfactory reference from someone who is able to comment on your attitude and approach to learning in a professional or academic sense.
- An Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check on the Child & Adult Workforce and Child and Adult Barring Lists and subscription to the DBS Update Service.
- A satisfactory medical will be required once an offer has been made. We will contact you closer to your start date with details of how to obtain these.
- The University normally requires a minimum 5 GCSEs including Mathematics/Numeracy and English at Grade C or Grade 4 or above, or their equivalent, but consideration is given to individual circumstances.
- Equivalent qualifications considered are Essential Skills Level Two in Communication and Application of Number, or Functional Skills Level Two in English and Mathematics. (Must have been achieved since 2016).
Closed for International applicants
Unfortunately, this course is not currently open to international applicants, please visit our course pages where you can find an alternative course choice.
Contextual offers
We may make you a lower offer based on a range of factors, including your background (where you live and the school or college that you attended, for example), your experiences and individual circumstances (as a care leaver, for example). This is referred to as a contextual offer, and we receive data from UCAS to support us in making these decisions.
USW prides itself on its student experience and we support our students to achieve their goals and become a successful graduate. This approach helps us to support students who have the potential to succeed and who may have faced barriers that make it more difficult to access university.
We're here to help
Whether you a have a question about your course, fees and funding, the application process or anything else, there are plenty of ways you can get in touch, and we'd love to talk to you. You can contact our friendly admissions team by phone, email or chat to us online.
Fees and Funding
£9,535
per year*£9,535
per year*£16,200
per year*Additional Costs
As a student of USW, you’ll have access to lots of free resources to support your study and learning, such as textbooks, publications, online journals, laptops, and plenty of remote-access resources. Whilst in most cases these resources are more than sufficient in supporting you with completing your course, additional costs, both obligatory and optional, may be required or requested for the likes of travel, memberships, experience days, stationery, printing, or equipment.
*Obligatory
An enhanced DBS is required. The update service is recommended.
Cost: £64.74 annually for enhanced DBS and £16 for the update service.
University Quality Assurance
At USW, we regularly review our courses in response to changing patterns of employment and skills demand to ensure we offer learning designed to reflect today’s student needs and tomorrow’s employer demands.
If during a review process course content is significantly changed, we’ll write to inform you and talk you through the changes for the coming year. But whatever the outcome, we aim to equip our students with the skillset and the mindset to succeed whatever tomorrow may bring. Your future, future-proofed.
Life at USW
Halls are a big part of your student experience and there’s accommodation at all three of our locations. If you don’t want to live near the campus, there are great transport links to keep you connected.
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How to apply
All applications for full-time undergraduate courses or foundation degrees should be made via UCAS. Take the next step: Apply through UCAS. You can apply to us directly for all part-time undergraduate courses, if you’re seeking advanced entry or you’re an international student. To apply directly, please choose the application form below for your preferred start date and mode of study (full-time or part-time.)
Advanced entry
If you already have a relevant qualification or experience related to the course you're applying for, you may be eligible to start at a later stage of the course. For example, students from partner colleges can ‘top up’ their qualifications to a degree by joining us in Year Two or Year Three of a course. This process is known as ‘advanced entry’, you can apply directly to the University for 'advanced entry' using the application forms provided above.
International admissions
International applicants can apply to us directly. If the University has an in-country team in your region, your application will be assigned to them for assistance.
