Working in the community is a challenging and rewarding area of nursing, as it allows you to support and provide care within patients’ own homes. It is a specialist area that involves providing care for patients with a range of different medical conditions. It involves working alongside GP practices, acute hospitals, and other health and social care services to ensure patients’ health needs are met. As the government continues to move care from the acute setting into patients’ homes, community nurses are seeing more and more complex patients within their own homes and are remaining at home to be treated for conditions to which they previously would have been admitted into the hospital.

Therefore, I needed a specialist qualification and the specialist community practitioner (district nurse) qualification at the University of Bolton enables me to develop the high-quality skills required by working within the district. The postgraduate programme at Bolton is taught by a highly skilled professional in the area who understands the role of a district nurse and has had professional experience; so, they are aware of the challenges that the workforce has faced and is continuing to face. They are guided by the Nursing and Midwifery-Council standards and supported by the Queens Nursing institutes standards and professional requirements of the qualification. Adding to this they have professional relationships with their trust partners, which means they can support the students through the programme effectively.

Upon completion of the programme, it allowed me to work with a higher skill-set and support my patients, along with supporting the team of professionals who are working alongside me in providing this care. This allowed the team and the patients to be provided with the support that they deserved and needed.

However, I wanted to progress my career in a different direction and wanted to support the development of the future community nursing workforce. Therefore, I joined the University of Bolton as a nursing lecturer to teach in the pre-registration and postgraduate programmes. This is because I wanted to provide the same support I had received whilst completing my postgraduate specialist practitioner qualification. This is allowing me to increase the profile of community nursing within the future nursing workforce. Thus, hoping that more will join when they qualify and develop their own careers.

Nursing at Bolton This career path has allowed me to gain my fellowship in higher education and resulted in being able to develop current programmes and build new content with our partner organisation. However, there was the title, the ‘Queen Nurse’ which I wanted to achieve; this title is prestigious given to nursing staff who demonstrate a high level of commitment and patient care within the community. This application is a highly rigorous process, requiring not only a detailed application, but also what your achievements are within community nursing and what you want to achieve further within this specialty; including feedback from colleagues’ patients, and students. This is then reviewed by a panel over several months whilst you wait for the outcome. I recently attended this prestige award ceremony, and I can proudly say I am a ‘Queen’s Nurse’ and wear the title with pride.

This award will provide more opportunities through networking and funding to further my career. Allowing me to support in the development of the community nursing workforce through research and supporting policy change to make the area more alluring to future nurses.

If you are like me and want to develop your skills to rise to the top in a rewarding career, then a postgraduate degree in nursing from the University of Bolton could be a great career choice. Study in our £31 million Bolton One building, in the heart of our supportive learning environment, and enjoy #UniAsItShouldBe!