Are you a health professional involved in caring for patients with heart failure? This short course focuses on developing your knowledge and understanding of the clinical management of adults with this complex disease.

Key information

Award:

AdvDip(CPD)

Mode of Study:

Part-time

Duration:

14 weeks

Location:

University of Bolton

Start date:

To be confirmed

Course Details

This stand-alone professional development module offers an advanced understanding of the clinical care of adults with heart failure. It's ideal for those specialising in caring for heart failure patients in hospital or primary care.

Our expert team will support you in developing your knowledge and understanding of cardiac anatomy and physiology, pathophysiology, treatment and management, and palliation. We'll emphasise understanding the relationship between heart failure and related comorbid conditions, for example, acute kidney injury and chronic kidney disease. We'll also explore drug and non-drug heart failure therapies in detail, helping you understand their value in long-term prognosis and their implications for multi-morbid patients.

In a simulation setting, you'll learn how to clinically assess heart failure patients. We'll discuss the key investigations, including brain natriuretic peptide (BNP), the electrocardiogram and the echocardiogram. The course will stress the need to solve complex problems and develop bespoke management plans for these complex patients, which include you reflecting on your own clinical experiences.

Our experienced and knowledgeable team will support you in exploring every facet of heart failure. Accepting that heart failure remains a potentially lethal condition, we'll consider the specific needs of terminally ill heart failure patients.

All healthcare professionals can benefit from studying this course. However, we expect it will be of greatest benefit to colleagues who are already caring for heart patients on a regular basis, both hospital and primary care, including palliative care.

Highlights

Our dedicated academic team brings extensive health and social care experience to the course content. Along with their passion for service excellence in clinical practice settings, they're also currently engaged in highly relevant research, which means they can add valuable context and insight to your learning.
The course is designed to fit in with busy home and working lives.
As you study this course, we'll encourage you to develop the skills, values and behaviours so popular with employers. These include action planning, personal impact and confidence, self-awareness, social and ethical responsibility, problem-solving, initiative and communication skills.

Key Features

The University of Bolton has been offering high-quality courses designed to meet the health and social care sector's needs for over 30 years, so we have the knowledge and experience to anticipate and respond to health and social care changes.
Our courses and programmes respond directly to the requirements of the NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework (KSF), which is at the heart of the career and pay progression aspect of Agenda for Change.
We review the course curriculum regularly to ensure we include and apply contemporary theories.
Upon successfully completing this course, you'll be awarded an Advanced Professional Development qualification in Heart Failure worth 20 credits at Level HE7.

You must have a professional qualification in healthcare, including nursing, pharmacy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, physician associate, dietician, podiatrist or paramedic.
You may be required to attend an interview and/or provide a portfolio of work.
If English isn’t your first language, you’ll also need IELTS 7.0 with normally no less than 6.5 in any band (or equivalent). We also accept a range of other English language qualifications – please visit our English Language Requirements web page for more details.
Please note that this course is subject to the University of Bolton's Fitness to Practise procedure.

Where changes are made to material information contained in this course description or a decision is taken to suspend a course between the offer of admissions and enrolment, we will inform applicants at the earliest possible opportunity and will outline the various options available to the applicant.

This course offers academic progression for health care professionals in the specialist field of clinical practice in heart failure.

Course fees

Home students starting this course in the first year will be required to pay a Home fee of £800 for the academic year 2024/25.

Overseas students starting this course in the first year will be required to pay a Overseas fee of £800 for the academic year 2024/25.

Important note regarding tuition fees for the 2023-2024 academic year: EU nationals who meet residency requirements (have settled or pre-settled status) may be eligible for 'Home' fee status. If you do not meet these residency requirements, overseas fees will apply. Irish citizens living in the UK or Ireland will be eligible for 'Home' fee status under the Common Travel Area arrangement. Please read the student finance for EU students web page on www.gov.uk for information.

The fees for a student's course of study will be set for the normal duration of that course subject only to inflationary increases – measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) recorded in March each year to take effect for subsequent start dates.

Bursaries

Click here for more information about the scholarships and bursaries available to University of Bolton students.

For details of how to apply for this course, please choose your status from the options below:

Please contact Admissions by telephone on 01204 903903 or email enquiries@bolton.ac.uk

Admissions
University of Bolton
Deane Road
Bolton, BL3 5AB
United Kingdom

Tel: 01204 903903
Email: enquiries@bolton.ac.uk

International applications are not possible for this course

As an international student you are not allowed to study this course because of the restrictions on your visa.

We offer a wide range of full-time courses in lots of different subjects, many of our courses start in September and January. If you would like to see what courses are available please visit our Course Search.

This advanced professional development course adopts a blended learning approach, using the principles of case-based learning to develop your enquiry skills and place this in the context of patient care. Sessions will take place face-to-face, in-class, online and in dedicated simulation suites.

We'll introduce you to topics through keynote lectures involving a mixture of theory and case-based discussions around clinical scenarios. Following the lectures, we'll expect you to explore each topic in greater depth, and in relation to your own practice, through self-directed learning. These activities will increase your understanding of heart failure and its management. We'll encourage you to consider contemporary research evidence and use this to inform your clinical decision-making and information exchange with patients and colleagues.

You'll have two summative assessments: an in-class assessment of 50 multiple choice questions and a 3000-word, case-based written assignment. Before your summative assessments, you'll be well supported, including formative in-class assessments and tutoring for your written assignments.

Modules

Advanced Professional Development Diploma Heart Failure

Assessment methods

Level	Assesment method
Level one	Coursework 50%, Written exams 50%

Learning activities

Level	Learning activity
Level one	Guided independent study 77%, Scheduled learning and teaching activities 23%

Disclaimer

The university will use all reasonable endeavours to deliver your course as described in its published material and the programme specification for the academic year in which you begin your course. The university considers changes to courses very carefully and the university will minimise any changes. Please be aware that our courses are subject to review on an ongoing basis and changes may be necessary due to legitimate staffing, financial, regulatory and academic reasons. The content of course modules and mode of associated assessments may be updated on an annual basis. This is to ensure that all modules are up-to-date and responsive to employment and sector needs. The published course material and the programme specification contain indicative ‘optional modules’ that may be subject to change due to circumstances outside of our control. For this reason, we cannot guarantee to run any specific optional module.