Heya,
I can only say for my course at City.
It is demanding to write in the style they want for the essays (like I mentioned about reflective writing- but I dont come from an Arts background so there we go). I have no problems with calculations so alot of people struggle with calculations its something that can be demanding if you dont get to good grasp of numbers but I'd say its GCSE level maths, and nowhere near A level standard of maths.More specifically get a book on nursing calculations and there are step by step instructions. As for contact hours the first year it was about 8-10 hours a week including seminars, so alot of people work part time during the weekends. I personally was scared to do that and only worked during the major holidays like christmas and summer (full on). This term I am in two days a week tuesdays for an hour and wednesday for 3 hour seminar. Its really nothing but like I said they emphasise on self studying.
There is so much biology that there is not enough time to cover everything. I would recommend understanding the major disease pathology though, for example for diabetes what is the distinction between type 1 and type 2, how does insulin work, whats normal level of glucose supposed to be...not unreasonable to expect from a nurse right? but we are not crossing into the boundaries of medical school. What is shock? What are the three main types of shock? With Pharmacology, we are not taught it so I bought myself a book on introductory to pharmacology and learnt some basic drugs, for example paracetamol intake should not exceed 4g a day, it causes hepatotoxicity. I familiarised myself with the analgesics, the main groups are NSAIDs (ibuprofen, naloxone, diclofenac) main side effect is increased stomach acid so there is risk of ulcer formation , opioids (morphine, codeine phosphate, fentanyl) Fentanyl is about 100X more potent than morphine usually administered via a patch (transdermal route). Some of this stuff was picked along on placement but I like to do supplementary reading. However biology is not assessed (at this uni) so there was never really an incentive to learn it but I learnt out of genuine interest.
So to pass its not too demanding but I want to be an excellent nurse not a nurse that scrapped by so you only get what you put in at the end of the day.We only get to choose our final placement and in the same hospital but it might be different elsewhere. Elective placement is only in spain for us and you need to know spanish so you need look into individual unis.