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I might be biased but I reckon mental health nursing is one of the best jobs you can possibly
have in the world. It gives you
so much variety and so much quality and so many challenges and there are so many opportunities
within it. It is hard work, it's not like any other degree, you
know, it's very well-organised because you have so much that you have to get in. You
have placement time and you have the theory. I've made a lot of friends on this course.
It is hard work, you do have to really keep on top of it and make an effort
to meet up with them because it is hard work but working together with them, that
works really well. I knew, before I came, that it was going to be quite science-orientated
and I think Manchester has that reputation. From doing Social Psychology before,
I was always interested in more the social side of things but having had
work experience and working with nurses, I thought I could see how much science was important.
The people that teach on the course come from a variety of backgrounds.
A lot of them are mental health nurses, many of them have many, many years of
different experiences working in the field of mental health. Some of them are specialists
in older age care, some of them are specialists in child and adolescent mental
health, some of them are specialists, like me, in areas of substance misuse or
serious mental illness and we are able to bring our real-life experiences into our academic
teaching. Even though I was quite intimidated by some of the modules,
you know, microbiology and pharmacology, anatomy and I'd not done science A-levels so I was
quite worried about how I would cope with that but they were reassuring and there's
a lot of support, we get a lot of extra tuition. We're mental health nurses; our job
is in supporting people. We'd be really remiss if we weren't able to
support our students and each other. The course has been fantastic, it's been really interesting.
There has been lots of variety and there's lots of things to see
and obviously Manchester is a big city so you get to see lots of different types of
people, you know, it's very diverse so you come across lots of diverse problems and people
and characters. In first year, there's one big placement at the end, in second
year there's three placements and in third year the same, three. In second
year there's the option to do your... Developing Independent Learning in Practice, which gives
you the opportunity to
pretty much go wherever you want - a couple of friends have been to Zambia, Australia,
Peru, or you can go back home to anywhere in the UK if you can organise that.
Otherwise it can an area that you're particularly interested in, around
Manchester and they are really helpful in organising that. I think the University does
its best to prepare you and to make sure you have lots of transferable skills and that's
really crucial. It enables our students, at the end of the three years here,
to, not only exit with a really good degree but also enables them to be registered on
the register of nurses as registered mental health nurses and get jobs in the NHS,
the private sector, voluntary sector and so on and so forth. When I leave I'd
like to work on a ward as a staff nurse - I think that's a good place to start and from
there, just see where it takes me. I think Manchester's given me a lot of really
good opportunities. This degree has definitely equipped me - it's improved my
social skills, I've got a lot more confidence now after placement which I didn't initially
think at the beginning. If I can hopefully do quite well, maybe I'll do a Masters
here, that's going to be... they're quite supportive in that. I think the
jobs that people decide on in the end is... you can't predict what people will go into.
So some people will come along and know from the beginning what they want to
do but there's definitely more people who are undecided. There's a lot of
different people on this course. There's a lot of people, you know, 18-25, but there's
also a lot of people over that who've done, this is their second degree, or with
children, families at home. We have a real wide variety of students. They come
from all kinds of backgrounds, they come from all kinds of parts of the country. Many of
our students are slightly more mature and many of them have already become
interested in this field of practice and interest because of other things they've
done before coming here. You definitely don't have to have a lot of life experience or have
done lots of further studying - there are lots of different ways you can get
into nurse training and mental health nursing is the same. So I wouldn't be put
off by not having had life experience. Even though I've done a degree before, that was
just the way that I kind of happened into it. Our results seem to reflect that
it doesn't really make that much difference what you were like when you come here -
it's much more about how you develop yourself academically when you are here. And no matter
what your academic background before coming here, I believe, I strongly
believe that we are able to provide you, all students, with an opportunity to
learn and grow and be supported academically within the department. I chose Manchester
because I knew that it was a vibrant place - I knew that it had a good reputation
as a city, as a place to live and I knew people that lived here, and my partner
lives here. It seemed like the natural place to go. Manchester always appealed to me - I'd
been down here for football, it has good nightlife, great shopping and the
university's got a really good reputation. The world's your oyster here because
you've got so much creativity - you've got arts programmes and music programmes and you've
got a fantastic club scene and gig scene - it really is a great place to be a
student and our students take full part in that. I knew that the University of
Manchester had a really good reputation. When I said to people at work that I was going
to Manchester, you know, social workers and nurses were like "Oh, that's really
good." If you're going to study nursing, I think
you should try to make sure it's something you really want to do. If you want to
work in mental health, even more so. You should reflect on whether this is a job for you.
If however, you think it is, I don't think there's any better place to come
and study to be a mental health nurse than Manchester.