Mental health nursing or adult nursing, which course should I apply for?

Hello there
Let me just give some background information about myself. Im 20 years old and for the past 10 months I have been working in care. I have worked in care homes as a bank worker and now as permanent. This includes typical care homes as well as nursing homes. I really enjoy my job and helping others in their everyday life and i think that I am one of the people who know maintain good contact with others. In my job i have seen nurses working with things such as setting up peg feed to patients and administering medication.I have also been helping them with their tasks. I dealt with non dementia as well as alzheimers and advanced dementia patients. As things are now I really dream of being a nurse. I really want to become one. I Want to apply soon for thr september 2016 intake.

In terms of my qualigications I have my gcse's and 280 ucas points from a btec course. I do not have access course. Apparently in Wolverhampton uni and coventry you do not need you to have the access course so I want to be applying for those at least. I live in coventry so I suppouse it would be nice to end up studying in coventry.

Anyway based on my profile. Am I more suitable to applying for adult or mental health nursing?. I have always only considered adult nursing as i was considering working with non mental people. However a mate at work said that mental health nursing is really fun. Would they even consider me for mental health nursing? I have worked with dementia patients but not in any mental facility or anything like that. I heard it is really hard to get into a nursing course nowadays which kind of makes me slighyly anxious.

I would greatly appreciate of people who are currently studying mental or adult nursing.How different are those 2 courses? Also any people who have good knowledge on the subject

Reply 1

PaediatricStN

12

@claireestelle @amyc123

Reply 2

claireestelle

22

Original post by 8EricZ

Hello there
Let me just give some background information about myself. Im 20 years old and for the past 10 months I have been working in care. I have worked in care homes as a bank worker and now as permanent. This includes typical care homes as well as nursing homes. I really enjoy my job and helping others in their everyday life and i think that I am one of the people who know maintain good contact with others. In my job i have seen nurses working with things such as setting up peg feed to patients and administering medication.I have also been helping them with their tasks. I dealt with non dementia as well as alzheimers and advanced dementia patients. As things are now I really dream of being a nurse. I really want to become one. I Want to apply soon for thr september 2016 intake.

In terms of my qualigications I have my gcse's and 280 ucas points from a btec course. I do not have access course. Apparently in Wolverhampton uni and coventry you do not need you to have the access course so I want to be applying for those at least. I live in coventry so I suppouse it would be nice to end up studying in coventry.

Anyway based on my profile. Am I more suitable to applying for adult or mental health nursing?. I have always only considered adult nursing as i was considering working with non mental people. However a mate at work said that mental health nursing is really fun. Would they even consider me for mental health nursing? I have worked with dementia patients but not in any mental facility or anything like that. I heard it is really hard to get into a nursing course nowadays which kind of makes me slighyly anxious.

I would greatly appreciate of people who are currently studying mental or adult nursing.How different are those 2 courses? Also any people who have good knowledge on the subject

Hey

I m a first year student mental health nurse :smile:

(only on week 3 so far though ). But i would say that you have more than enough academic qualifications to try for both mental health or adult nursing, assuming you ve got the 5 gcses above C with two of them being maths and english? :smile:

As you say you've got dementia experience, I d say that's something that would really help in applying to mental health nursing. However, where you say you might consider working with "non-mental people" (I dont mean to cause any offence but think about your wording on this, i appreciate that on an internet forum it is difficult to get your point across, but in future word it something like someone who does not have an mh diagnosis or something along those lines it's much less stigmatising/discriminatory as a word choice), remember that 25% of people in the uk will experience mental ill health at some point in their lives so if you decide to work in adult you would still come across patients with those illness anyway.

So my general advice when making a decision, I myself was originally going to go to adult but changed my mind completely after months of reflection and gaining more experience in mental health settings (i realised that this field is the much better one for me and i m much more passionate about it) , I would say think about what sort of patients and age ranges you want to work with, what skills you think you d want to be using more, mental health does involves learning more therapeutic communication techniques and there's the scope to go onto do cbt training and things like that, whereas adult has a more focus on your physical skills in a way.
Also with mental health nursing you can get slightly more scope to work in forensic settings (prisons and the like if that interests you) and potentially children as the NMC registration in mental health does allow you to work in child mental health services whereas as mental health is slowly becoming more community based adult could have more hospital based jobs in the future.

Apologises for my very long post, hope this helps somehow :smile:

Reply 3

amyc123

9

Original post by 8EricZ

Hello there
Let me just give some background information about myself. Im 20 years old and for the past 10 months I have been working in care. I have worked in care homes as a bank worker and now as permanent. This includes typical care homes as well as nursing homes. I really enjoy my job and helping others in their everyday life and i think that I am one of the people who know maintain good contact with others. In my job i have seen nurses working with things such as setting up peg feed to patients and administering medication.I have also been helping them with their tasks. I dealt with non dementia as well as alzheimers and advanced dementia patients. As things are now I really dream of being a nurse. I really want to become one. I Want to apply soon for thr september 2016 intake.

In terms of my qualigications I have my gcse's and 280 ucas points from a btec course. I do not have access course. Apparently in Wolverhampton uni and coventry you do not need you to have the access course so I want to be applying for those at least. I live in coventry so I suppouse it would be nice to end up studying in coventry.

Anyway based on my profile. Am I more suitable to applying for adult or mental health nursing?. I have always only considered adult nursing as i was considering working with non mental people. However a mate at work said that mental health nursing is really fun. Would they even consider me for mental health nursing? I have worked with dementia patients but not in any mental facility or anything like that. I heard it is really hard to get into a nursing course nowadays which kind of makes me slighyly anxious.

I would greatly appreciate of people who are currently studying mental or adult nursing.How different are those 2 courses? Also any people who have good knowledge on the subject

Hi

I'm a newly qualified adult nurse. You need to think about what you want from your career and what kind of patients you want to interact with.

Adult nurses deal with mostly physical health problems, but obviously we deal with mental health issues too. Personally I discounted MH nursing as I felt it was too specialised for me and adult nursing provided a wider range of options.

What do you want from nursing?

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 4

8EricZ

OP

2

Thank you very much for your detailed answer. I appreciate it a lot. :smile:

You know I am now seriously considering applying for the mental branch of nursing. I think I would enjoy it a lot.

Reply 5

8EricZ

OP

2

Clairesteele and amayc123 . Thank you very much for both of your feedbacks. Theyhelped a lot :smile:

Reply 6

claireestelle

22

Original post by 8EricZ

Thank you very much for your detailed answer. I appreciate it a lot. :smile:

You know I am now seriously considering applying for the mental branch of nursing. I think I would enjoy it a lot.

Glad to help :smile:

Reply 7

tfpm80

11

How did it go in the end?

Reply 8

rg.nurse

7

Original post by 8EricZ

Hello there
Let me just give some background information about myself. Im 20 years old and for the past 10 months I have been working in care. I have worked in care homes as a bank worker and now as permanent. This includes typical care homes as well as nursing homes. I really enjoy my job and helping others in their everyday life and i think that I am one of the people who know maintain good contact with others. In my job i have seen nurses working with things such as setting up peg feed to patients and administering medication.I have also been helping them with their tasks. I dealt with non dementia as well as alzheimers and advanced dementia patients. As things are now I really dream of being a nurse. I really want to become one. I Want to apply soon for thr september 2016 intake.

In terms of my qualigications I have my gcse's and 280 ucas points from a btec course. I do not have access course. Apparently in Wolverhampton uni and coventry you do not need you to have the access course so I want to be applying for those at least. I live in coventry so I suppouse it would be nice to end up studying in coventry.

Anyway based on my profile. Am I more suitable to applying for adult or mental health nursing?. I have always only considered adult nursing as i was considering working with non mental people. However a mate at work said that mental health nursing is really fun. Would they even consider me for mental health nursing? I have worked with dementia patients but not in any mental facility or anything like that. I heard it is really hard to get into a nursing course nowadays which kind of makes me slighyly anxious.

I would greatly appreciate of people who are currently studying mental or adult nursing.How different are those 2 courses? Also any people who have good knowledge on the subject

Hi Eric,
I am an adult nurse myself for about 10y. I have known quite a lot of mental health nurses throughout my career as some patients have to come to ICU with mental health nurses. I guess it depends but mostly mental health is not fun, at all. I am not saying people don't enjoy the work they do, but they have to really love it to enjoy it. Mental health is tough. Adult nursing has its challenges too of course. There is a reason mental health nurses get paid paid quite well, because there are not many, because the work is tough. That is my perspective at least. I guess it would be better to come from someone with some real experience on that field. It would be a safe bet to apply for Adult nursing.

Reply 9

tfpm80

11

Original post by rg.nurse

Hi Eric,
I am an adult nurse myself for about 10y. I have known quite a lot of mental health nurses throughout my career as some patients have to come to ICU with mental health nurses. I guess it depends but mostly mental health is not fun, at all. I am not saying people don't enjoy the work they do, but they have to really love it to enjoy it. Mental health is tough. Adult nursing has its challenges too of course. There is a reason mental health nurses get paid paid quite well, because there are not many, because the work is tough. That is my perspective at least. I guess it would be better to come from someone with some real experience on that field. It would be a safe bet to apply for Adult nursing.