The BSc Nursing (Psychiatric) programme prepares nurses to promote health, wellbeing and dignity across the lifespan through skilled, ethical and careful practice based on the best evidence and professional judgement. This is achieved though the development of lifelong learning skills for the personal and professional development of knowledge, skills/competencies and attitudes over the duration of the programme, leading to level 8 award and professional registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland. The programme facilitates the learner to be active, reflexive, autonomous, and motivated by engagement in innovative teaching and learning activities throughout the duration of the student experience. UCD Curricula are student-focused, research-led and research informed, with a scholarly approach to programme design, aimed at inspiring a passion and excellence in the learner’s discipline by forming identity, integrity, commitment and curiosity for the provision of holistic, safe, ethical, compassionate evidence based nursing/midwifery care. Curricula are developed with stakeholder involvement to ensure they meet the current and future needs of learners, and a complex and evolving healthcare system.

The BSc programme is designed with the learner at the centre. A wide variety of pedagogical approaches to teaching, learning and assessment enhance the student experience, encouraging the incremental development of learning. Learning takes place in multiple environments across the university and clinical practice environments. The partnership with our professional and allied health professional clinical partners across the healthcare sector in programme design and delivery is a major strength. Learning is facilitated by the use of a variety of innovative pedagogies and technologies to meet emerging student, professional and health system needs. This commitment to curricular innovation ensures that there is alignment of programme learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities and assessment, in addition to enhancing the learner experience. Programmes are delivered by experts in the fields of education, practice discipline and professional standing, ensuring that learners experience a coherent, cumulative, research-based educational programme that meets all academic and professional regulations, standards and requirements.

 

 

1 - A graduation the student will be an independent, lifelong learner, who critically questions, reflects and builds her/his personal and professional scholarship throughout their career. He/she will be adaptive to the dynamically altering environment.
2 - Demonstrate capacity to evaluate, critically analyse, apply inter/national research and best practice including clinical audit and quality assurance measures to advance nursing/midwifery practice.
3 - Use technology effectively to enhance personal and professional development and practice, contributing to her/his learning, and the delivery of safe, evidence based healthcare.
4 - Deliver safe, high quality, compassionate, ethical, legal, person-centred, collaborative and accountable practice utilising the nursing process as part of an inter-disciplinary team.
5 - Apply critical, creative, reflective, independent thinking and problem solving to ensure clinical decision making and care is safe, effective, evidence based and person-centred.
6 - Ability to communicate effectively with healthcare service users, families, advocates, the healthcare team and wider society with respect, hospitality, knowledge and skill in a timely, comprehensive and just engagement.
7 - Collaborate effectively with the persons who are service users, their families, the public, peers and other members of the interdisciplinary team in a competent, compassionate and professional manner that respects autonomy, dignity and privacy.
8 - Demonstrate leadership, effect change in the practice area, promote innovation by managing and delivering evidence based care; reflecting and systematically evaluating learning and impact on health care delivery.
9 - Consistently and effectively apply professional knowledge within a critical awareness of professional and legislative frameworks/national guidelines and standards
10 - Demonstrate personal organisation, mastery of complex and specialised skills, technology and the ability to manage, the team and care environment safely and effectively assessing risk, priorities, resources and quality with respect and person focus
11 - Foster a supportive, quality clinical/ work environment that facilitates practice in accord with the virtues of respect, kindness and safety through provision of supervision, facilitating learning, openness, wellbeing, recovery, independence, quality
12 - Deliver nursing, person-centred, sensitive, empowering, discreet, inclusive, evidence based interventions and trauma informed care, respectful of culture, diversity, believes and values, informing health promotion, self-management and life choices.

If you are interested in a rewarding, exciting and challenging career in healthcare, then nursing is for you.

As a registered nurse, you have a wide range of clinical career options open to you, and with your academic and professional qualifications, you can choose to travel anywhere in the world. A degree in nursing provides you with the expert knowledge and clinical skills needed to care for people in a wide range of healthcare settings.

A nursing degree is a professional degree that allows the graduate to apply for registration as a nurse with the professional regulatory authority for nursing in Ireland, An Bord Altranais. A degree in Nursing at UCD is a four-year (or four-and-a-half-year for DN116 and DN117) honours degree that aims to develop knowledgeable, competent and caring professionals, by combining theoretical and clinical elements.

Students taking a degree in nursing pursue one of three modes of study as follows:
- BSc (Nursing) General Nursing (4 years) DN110/DN111
- BSc (Nursing) Psychiatric Nursing (4 years) DN120/DN121
- BSc (Nursing) Children's and General Nursing (Integrated) (4.5 years) DN116/DN117

Students interested in taking the General Nursing (DN110/DN111) or Children's and General (Integrated) Nursing (DN116/DN117) options will experience a variety of care settings, including acute medical and surgical, accident & emergency, operating theatre, intensive care, maternity and childcare, care of older persons, children's nursing and community care.

Students hoping to take the Psychiatric Nursing option (DN120/DN121) are placed in care settings such as acute assessment and admission, weight restoration programmes, addiction services, forensic services, child and adolescent services, intellectual disability services and community care.

Each nursing mode is pre-chosen through the CAO system and the programme content varies according to the mode being followed. However, all degree students follow a number of common modules in both the life and human sciences.
Examples of subjects studied in the life sciences include:
- Physics
- Chemistry
- Biochemistry
- Pharmacology
- Microbiology
- Structure & function of the human body

Examples of subjects studied in the human sciences include:
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Health & social policy
- Ethics

Core modules covered on the General Nursing option in particular include: Clinical Placement Operating Theatre and Clinical Placement High Dependency in Stage 2; Clinical Placement Maternity Care and Clinical Placement Out-patient Department in Stage 3; and Social Science for Healthcare in Stage 4.

Some core modules specific to the Psychiatric Nursing programme include: Foundations in Mental Health in Stage 1; Clinical Placement Addiction Services and Pharmacology & Pathology in Stage 2; Acute Mental Illness and Therapeutic Interventions in Stage 3; and Management & Quality Improvement and Health & Social Policy in Stage 4.

Core modules expressly found on the Children's & General Nursing programme include: The Child in Health & Wellness and Child & Family Centred Nursing in Stage 2; Child and Adolescent Special Healthcare Needs in Stage 3; Bioscience Applied to Nursing in Stage 4; and Clinical Placement Children's & General in the final stage.

The degree programmes emphasise the development of knowledge for clinical practice - the science of nursing science - and the development of a range of competencies needed for professional practice as a registered nurse. All three nursing degree programmes incorporate periods of theoretical and clinical instruction at each of the four/four-and-a-half stages and include a period of internship in clinical practice under the supervision of registered nurses as a member of the care team in the final year, for which you are paid a salary.

Depending on your chosen mode of study, you will undertake a range of theoretical and clinical modules that are designed to meet the professional requirements for registration in the particular division of the Register of Nurses.

You will study in state-of-the-art facilities in Ireland at the UCD School of Nursing, Midwifery & Health Systems building, located at the university's Health Sciences Centre. You will take your clinical placements within the School's partner university hospitals and in other healthcare institutions and settings.

Through the international student exchange programme, there are opportunities for you to travel abroad while studying.

The UCD School of Nursing, Midwifery & Health Systems has a student exchange arrangement with the University of Lund in Sweden, University of Athens, University of Malta and the School also hosts Junior Year Abroad students from a number of universities in the USA.

A degree in nursing is a passport to a rewarding and challenging career. Opportunities within Ireland are excellent with a wide variety of health service providers offering positions for registered nurses.

There are also numerous opportunities for specialisation in any one of a large number of fields of nursing and healthcare. The nurse in the modern health services has excellent career prospects and has a wide range of opportunities for career advancement beyond initial registration. A graduate of nursing or midwifery from UCD has the ability to travel throughout Europe, the Middle East, the USA, Canada, Australia and beyond.

UCD Nursing Midwifery and Health Systems Programme Office Health Sciences Centre Belfield, Dublin 4 Tel: +353 1 716 6407 Email: nursing@ucd.ie Web: www.ucd.ie/nmhs

Students are required to take all core modules. There are no elective modules in this stage. Students must successfully complete all clinical modules for their stage before they complete the programme.

Module ID	Module Title	Trimester	Credits
Stage 4 Core Modules
NMHS30970	Evidence Based Practice for Healthcare	2 Trimester duration (Aut-Spr)	10
NMHS30280	Teaching and Assessing in the Practicum	Autumn	5
NMHS30290	Management and Quality Improvement	Autumn	5
NMHS31040	Extremes of Age in Mental Health	Autumn	5
NMHS32230	Collab Nurs Pra Mental H Recov	Autumn	5
NMHS32450	Health Promotion and Sociology	Autumn	5
NMHS33540	Clin Plac 4A (Internship) MH	Spring	5
NMHS33550	Clin Plac 4B (Internship) MH	Spring	5
NMHS33570	Clin Plac 4D (Internship) MH	Spring and Summer (separate)	7.5
NMHS33560	Clin Plac 4C (Internship) MH	Summer	7.5
Stage 4 Core Modules

		Award		GPA
Programme	Module Weightings	Rule Description	Description
BHNUR001	Stage 4 - 70.00% Stage 3 - 30.00%	Standard Honours Award	First Class Honours	3.68	4.20
			Second Class Honours, Grade 1	3.08	3.67
			Second Class Honours, Grade 2	2.48	3.07
			Pass	2.00	2.47