Entry requirements

Applicants must be currently employed within a UK critical care environment and remain in that employment throughout the duration of the course.
Applicants can only do this course with the permission and support of their employers. Applicants must hold a professional registration in nursing and be active on the NMC register.
Applicants will normally have 18 months critical care experience. Applicants with a minimum of 12 months experience will be considered if appropriate evidence of professional development is provided (e.g. completion of CC3N Step Competencies).
Students will be required to attend 150 hours of placements in clinical practice and undertake clinical competency assessments.
The Course Director will use discretion to accept applications based on previous experience.

Months of entry

September

Course content

The aim of the course is to enable you to develop your knowledge and skills of clinical decision-making in health assessment, treatments and therapies within the critical care environment. It is designed to support you to independently lead and manage specialist care provision alongside other healthcare professionals.

Combining Health Assessment with specific modules in Critical Care, this course aims to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of clinical assessment skills and their application to critical care nursing.
Designed to enable you to analyse current trends, practice and knowledge in the treatment and care options for the critical care patient group and the wide range of illness encountered within the critical care environment.
In addition to university-based knowledge acquisition and development you will also have the opportunity to undertake placements in critical care settings to embed and apply your learning in relevant contexts

Why you should study this course

As you will already be working as a nurse the course has been designed to be delivered over three semesters to allow you to attend on a part-time basis in order to balance the requirements of work and study.

This course aims to prepare graduates to be capable of operating at the highest level of clinical practice, who will excel as clinical leaders and are ready to move into senior clinical roles with the capacity to:

influence local service delivery
foster evidence-informed practice
lead clinical teams
contribute to the education of the local healthcare workforce.

Knowledge and skills are attained by varied approaches to teaching and learning to give you a theoretical understanding and the opportunity to practice skills of clinical assessment and dealing with emergency situations.

Clinical placements in various local units provide practice-based teaching and learning where you can gain exposure to expertise to embed current theoretical knowledge. This also offers the potential for learning from others to inform practice for your own department as well as yourself. You will reflect on your own practice and engage in work-based learning guided by the competency portfolio.

Our well-established academic team have extensive clinical and teaching experience and have recently updated the course to meet the educational needs for the modern critical care nurse. The multi-million-pound Alison Gingell Building provides facilities for teaching and research, featuring hospital wards, critical care settings, operating theatre, community housing and other real-life nursing environments relevant to practice.

The course incorporates the National Competency Framework Step 2 and Step 3 Competencies for Critical Care Nurses as a core part of the assessment process to ensure that it is aligned to National Standards for Critical Care Nurse Education.

Focused system examination skills, simulation training and flipped classroom sessions provide the opportunity to engage you in the learning process as well as group work, seminars, interactive lectures and active group discussions and sharing experiences. Clinical competency portfolios for both the Health Assessment and Critical Care modules are designed to follow a system-based approach to assessment and care and form a key component of the learning outcomes.

Please use the official Coventry University website as your main source of information as our courses are subject to change throughout the year.