Nurses are high profile healthcare professionals who focus on patient care for individuals, families, and communities, ensuring that they attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and functioning. Capable of assessing, planning, implementing, and evaluating care independently of doctors, nurses provide support from basic triage to emergency surgery. A more detailed definition is provided by the International Council of Nurses.
Employability
Nurses work very intimately and hands on with patients and are considered the front line troops of the healthcare battle. And with places at university quite difficult to obtain, your character to do the job is even more important than usual. Some helpful attributes for the role of nurse include:
- Enjoy working with people
- Excellent interpersonal skills and good communicator
- Ability to listen, empathetic attitude towards relaxing the patient
- Demonstrably want to make a difference to patient lives
- Adaptable to new techniques and sophisticated equipment
- Organisational skills to safely collate patient information and data
Career Entry
Aspiring nurses in the UK must attend university to obtain a BSc in nursing in order to enter the job market. It is important that you check with individual universities for specific entry requirements for the relevant nursing degree courses but it is likely you will be required to have:
5 GCSE’s (A*-C grade), 3 A Levels (or equivalent) with high grades. 2 should preferably be science subjects with biology usually classed an essential.
To see rankings of UK universities offering Nursing courses, click here
Employers & Salaries
The majority of nurses are employed by NHS Trust hospitals, with a smaller but still significant percentage in private hospitals and clinics. Smaller numbers work in industrial or community situations such as schools, universities, large companies and community locations such as a GP practice or healthcare centre. With such a huge variety of nurses and nursing specialties, salary levels depends upon:
- Location i.e. hospital, community
- Experience and qualifications
- Specialty or branch
- Availability to move location for the more senior roles
Some typical salary levels are highlighted below
| Unregistered Nurse (Clinical Support Worker) | £13,653+ | Band 2 |
| Nurse graduate entry level | £21,176 | Band 5 |
| Nurse GP practice | Band 5 | |
| Nurse team leader | £25,472 | Band 6 |
| Nurse advanced practitioner | £30,460 | Band 7 |
| Nurse consultant | £54,454 | Band 8a-c |
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