UTS course code: C10122
UAC code: 606000 (FT) (Kuring-gai), 606001 (PT) (Kuring-gai), 606002 (FT)(City)
Testamur title: Bachelor of Nursing
Abbreviation: BN
Course fee: HECS (local); $7,500 per semester (international)
Total credit points: 144

Course aims
Advanced standing
Attendance
Course duration
Course structure
Full-time program
Part-time program
Accelerated program for Enrolled Nurses
Accelerated program (graduate entry)

Course aims

The Bachelor of Nursing aims to produce informed, reflective, caring and compassionate nurses who demonstrate competencies related to professional responsibility, interpersonal processes and the exercise of clinical judgment. Graduates are capable of delivering a high standard of safe and therapeutic nursing care in a variety of contexts. They demonstrate nursing care that is informed, responsible and respectful. In addition, graduates at degree level are prepared to foster the development of nursing as a practice discipline and a significant health profession within the community.

As a result of engaging in the course, graduates:

1. exhibit a sound knowledge of nursing practice that is informed by knowledge drawn from nursing and other disciplines such as biomedicine, physical, social and behavioural sciences, law, and ethics
2. demonstrate sound clinical judgment that is based on evidence and reflects appropriate reasoning within ethical, legal and resource frameworks
3. embody compassion, trust and respect for the dignity and integrity of all people in order to respond with compassion and understanding to values and beliefs in a pluralistic society
4. demonstrate therapeutic nursing care competence at a beginning level of skill, particularly in order to maintain/promote a physical and psychological environment which promotes safety, security and optimal health in relation to medicating safely, maintaining clinical asepsis, communicating clearly and relating effectively
5. appreciate the centrality of interpersonal processes to the practice of nursing and the utility of professional agency as a therapeutic intervention
6. participate effectively as a member of a multidisciplinary health care team in order to achieve common therapeutic goals
7. fulfil professional responsibilities and commitments of a registered nurse with responsiveness to social and environmental concerns
8. contribute to nursing knowledge development through reflective and research-based practice
9. understand and value the professional imperative to base nursing practice on evidence in order to access trustworthy evidence, recognise when evidence is less than adequate to fully inform care, and identify areas of practice that require further evidence, and
10. demonstrate a lively, questioning perspective that enables active contribution to the development of nursing as a discipline.

Advanced standing

Advanced standing may be offered to students who can demonstrate relevant prior knowledge or experience.

Attendance

Students are required to undertake formal study for 14 weeks each semester. This includes nursing practice.

Course duration

The Bachelor of Nursing is normally offered on a full-time basis over six semesters, or on a part-time basis over 12 semesters.

Course structure

Full-time students study four subjects per semester which incorporates nursing theory, science and clinical practice in a range of health facilities. The framework is based on the proposed interaction between three distinct themes: the processes of nursing inquiry, the centrality of the nursing relationship and the complex processes of clinical nursing. Nursing is a discipline informed by practice in which there is a continual interplay between theory and application, experience and understanding, and interpretation and reflection, leading to theory refinement and transformation resulting from reflection in and on experience.

Underpinning the person's entry into the nursing relationship is an actual, perceived or potential imbalance of health care demands and resources associated with actual or potential alterations in functional health status and processes or patterns of functional health status. The person brings to the relationship a complex organisation of physical, emotional and spiritual elements in relation to health care needs and wellbeing.

Dynamics of the nursing relationship require the nurse to respond with respect and compassion, given the differing values and beliefs of individuals and groups in contemporary society.

Through the processes of nursing inquiry and clinical judgment the nursing relationship takes the form of an intimate therapeutic interchange. Diverse nursing knowledge and skills are required in the delivery of nursing care, including varied reasoning skills, well developed interpersonal interaction skills and high standards of clinical ability in various contexts of care.

The Bachelor of Nursing as an initial qualification includes extensive nursing practice, which is a compulsory component of the course.

Students must gain a minimum of 144 credit points to complete the Bachelor of Nursing. Credit point values are shown for each subject.

Note: There may be some variations to the course structure that appears below for existing students due to curriculum changes.