Which field of nursing?

Adult, Children’s or Mental Health?

You will need to spend time considering which field to choose, to ensure that your decision is well-informed and the right one for you. On this page are some brief overviews of what you can expect within each specialism.

Adult

With an adult nurse qualification the world really is your oyster! Opportunities for adult nursing are continually expanding both here in the UK and abroad. You may be working in a busy hospital ward or department, as a nurse specialist running your own clinic, working in a prison or indeed in one of the expanding community areas such as a large health centre or working with the travelling community. As many more patients are cared for in the community, the nurse’s role is becoming more prevalent, visible and varied, enabling increasingly sicker patients to remain in their own homes.

Nurses are at the forefront of many specialist areas such as intensive care, trauma nursing, cancer care and care of the elderly. You may aspire towards being a true “expert” in your field and ultimately have the goal of becoming a Nurse Consultant where you will be leading, researching and making significant changes to practice. What makes adult nursing such a challenge is the sheer diversity of situations you will have to respond to, no two days ever being the same, and each one providing you with the job satisfaction you will find it hard to equal elsewhere.

Children’s

Nursing children can take you from the intensive care of a new-born baby with breathing problems to looking after a six foot tall adolescent whose leg has been broken in a football match and will cover a range of areas from hospital to the child’s own home. The reason you’re there as a child nurse is because children are not just mini adults; their bodies (and minds) work in different ways. The onset of symptoms can be sudden and extreme. Because children are still growing, the impact of the illness or injury on their development has to be taken into account and because they are young, they may be more scared or confused by what is happening to them. You will need to develop a good level of knowledge in child development and communication skills. Children and young people need nurses who understand their particular needs and can work in partnership with them and their families.

Mental Health

As a society we generally find it much easier to talk about being physically unwell than about mental ill health although this is beginning to change. Mental health nursing is a complex area and it endeavours to make sense of peoples difficulties of coping with what are often problems of everyday living ranging from anxiety, depression, suicide, mood swings or psychotic disturbances that are often described as ‘loss of contact with reality’.

Mental Health Nurses are at the forefront in providing support, dealing with people of all ages and from a wide range of backgrounds and will need to have developed a sense of self and be able to meet the challenge of uncertainty as ‘mental illness’ is not an exact science. Hence there is a need for rigorous and continuous studying so that practice is up-to-date and underpinned by the best available evidence.

Mental Health Nurses are also the most likely to be responsible for co-ordinating service users care in both the hospital and in the community. As a Mental Health nurse you would find yourself liaising professionally with a wide range of others including social workers, occupational therapists, psychiatrists, police, charities, local government and housing officials. This requires nurses who are knowledgeable, confident and with the ability to build a strong therapeutic alliance and to be able to enter into a dialogue with others as an equal contributor in promoting care that is clearly service user focused.

The mark of a professional nurse is the ability to observe and assess what is happening to a patient at any one time and to select the most effective response.