District nurse

As a district nurse, you will play a crucial role in the primary health care team. You’ll visit people in their own homes or in residential care homes, providing care for patients and supporting family members.

Also known as:

• Community nurse

Work activities

District nurses play a vital role in keeping hospital admissions and readmissions to a minimum and ensuring that patients can return to their own homes as soon as possible. You be providing a crucial service to both the patients, and hospitals. You will assess the healthcare needs of patients and families, and monitor the quality of care they’re receiving. Your patients can be of any age, but often many of them will be elderly, while others may have been recently discharged from hospital, be terminally ill or have physical impairments. You may be visiting patients every day or more than once a day, offering help, advice and support. You may work on your own or with other groups, such as the social services, voluntary agencies and other NHS organisations and help to provide and co-ordinate a wide range of care services.

Personal qualities and skills

As a nurse you will need to be a listener, a manager, as well as a skilled professional. You will need excellent people skills. You will be providing care for people of all ages and backgrounds. You should be able to put people at their ease, gain their confidence and deal sympathetically with their problems and fears.

Communication and observation are crucial to good nursing. You need to be a good at listening as well as talking and you have to be constantly alert to changes in patients’ conditions and the implications in terms of care. Nurses are the most frequent point of contact for patients, so you must be able to answer their questions, share your knowledge and skills with patients, their families and friends and make sure their needs are recognised by the rest of the care team.

You will be part of a multidisciplinary team that includes doctors, physiotherapists, anaesthetists, pharmacists, dietitians and many more. You need to know how all these different people work together. Nursing can sometimes involve managing distress. You’ll play a key part in helping patients and families come through their crises.

You’ll also need to have the right values and behaviours to become a nurse. These are defined by the 6Cs:

• Care.
• Compassion.
• Competence.
• Communication.
• Courage.
• Commitment.

Pay and opportunities

NHS employees are paid on a rising scale within defined pay bands, according to their skills and responsibilities. District nurses start at grade 6 of the Agenda for Change payscale, earning £35,392.

District nurses work a basic 37.5-hour week, which could include day, evening and weekend work. Some district nurses may be required to work shifts and be on-call.

Opportunities for district nurses occur in towns, cities and rural areas throughout the UK. There are also opportunities to work in other countries (some countries require extra qualifications).

Where are vacancies advertised?

Vacancies are advertised on the NHS Jobs website, in local/national newspapers, on the Government’s Find a Job service and on job boards.

Entry routes and training

You’ll need to complete the district nurse training programme, a degree-level scheme called the specialist practitioner programme. They tend to last one academic year when taken full time. Half of the specialist practitioner programme is theory, while the other half is practical, covering:

• Clinical nursing practice.
• Care and programme management.
• Clinical practice development.
• Clinical practice leadership.

Alternatively, you could take a level 7 district nurse degree apprenticeship. Similarly to the specialist practitioner programme, this involves training on the job while you undertake study towards relevant qualifications.

You could progress into a specialist, advanced team leader role or a management, research or teaching post.

Rehabilitation of Offenders Act: This career is an exception to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. This means that you must supply information to an employer about any spent or unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands or warnings, if they ask you to. This is different from other careers, where you only have to reveal information on unspent convictions if you are asked to.

Qualifications

For entry onto a nursing degree course, the usual requirement is:

• Two to three A-levels. Some universities ask for at least one science subject. Psychology and sociology can be other preferred subjects.
• Five GCSEs at grades 9-4, including English, maths and a science subject.

Adult opportunities

Age limits: It is illegal for organisations to set age limits for entry to employment, education or training, unless they can show there is a real need to have these limits.

Some employers enable experienced staff in relevant positions (such as senior healthcare assistants or assistant practitioners) to take a pre-registration degree course part-time on full salary, as long as they meet the usual entry requirements. Applicants who left full-time education some time ago may be required to give evidence of successful recent academic study, such as a QAA accredited access to higher education course or equivalent.

If you don’t have the qualifications that are usually needed to enter a nursing degree course, you might be able to start one after completing a college or university Access course, for example, Access to Nursing. You don’t usually need any qualifications to start an Access course, but you should check individual course details.

You might be able to use any previous learning or practical experience you have to complete your degree in a shorter time. This is through accreditation of prior (experiential) learning or APEL. Some universities reduce the preregistration time by as much as one year. Examples of previous learning might include having a relevant degree or practical experience of nursing, care or a related area. Not all universities offer this possibility, so please check with individual universities. There are also a small number of pre-registration MSc or postgraduate diploma courses, usually for graduates in health or science-related degrees (some universities consider graduates with any subject).

If you’ve had a break from nursing and want to return to the NHS, you’ll need to complete a Return to Practice (RTP) programme that is approved by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). The programmes refresh clinical skills and there are classroom sessions to discuss theory. Many RTP courses are part-time.

Related careers

• Health visitor
• Midwife
• Nurse
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