Employability
It won't surprise you to hear us say our graduates are highly employable! This is partly due to Birmingham being a large multicultural city, which means we provide a huge range of specialist and general services to children and young people.
Here's just a few of the numerous specialist areas that could be open to you after you successfully complete your BSc (Hons) Child Nursing degree...
Specialist cardiac nurses
The role includes managing your own caseload of children and families with complex cardiac needs. You will also support families pre- and post-surgery. You'll need to work closely with other professionals, including the fetal cardiology, transition and adolescent services, cardiology consultants, cardiac nurse practitioners, paediatricians, allied health professionals and local children’s community services.
Paediatric Intensive Care (PICU)
In PICU you care for children and adolescents (usually up to the age of 18) who have life-threatening or high-acuity conditions that require constant monitoring in a high-tech children’s services area for critically ill, medically complex and/or post-surgical patients. As with all child nursing, PICU also involves collaboration with families, doctors and other healthcare professionals or clinicians to determine the best course of patient care and recovery.
Find out more from the Paediatric Intensive Care Society
Paediatric Diabetes Specialist Nurse (PDSN)
As a PDSN your role is to establish a holistic and developmental approach to diabetes care in patients from infancy to adolescence. You'll set realistic objectives according to the child's age and level of understanding, as well as the needs of the family. Working with the wider paediatric diabetes team, you'll co-ordinate care, assessing, developing, implementing and evaluating programmes of holistic care and providing specialist clinical advice to health carers and others, such as schools. Your may work in a hospital or community setting.
The wider specialist diabetes team
Teenage Cancer Trust
Teenage Cancer Trust specialist nurses make sure young people receive the best care and support once they’ve been diagnosed with cancer. There's specialist training to understand what it's like to have cancer as a young person. The role involves being with young people when they have their treatment as well as working with doctors and other professionals to make sure young people understand their options and feel informed about what's happening to them.
Why Teenage Cancer Trust Nurses are so important
Community children's nurse
As a community children's nurse you provide nursing care to children and young people with a variety of life-limiting, life-threatening, complex disability and long-term conditions. These could be as wide-ranging as asthma, eczema or allergies, through to palliative and end of life care.
More about community children's nursing in Birmingham
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) nurse
It's a common preconception that you must train as a mental heath nurse to work in this area but it is actually nurses who specialise in the mental and physical development of children and young people who are crucial to providing the CAMHS service. In Birmingham this CAMHS service has been extended to help bridge the gap between children's and adult services meaning that the city's Forward Thinking service is available from 0 all the way through to 25 years old.