AdvDip(CPD) Heart Failure
Course Overview
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.
Entry Requirements
- 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 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's Fitness to Practice declaration.
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.
Career Opportunities
This course offers academic progression for health care professionals in the specialist field of clinical practice in heart failure.
Fees & Funding
Home/EU Fees
Home students starting this course in the first year will be required to pay a Home fee of £900 for the academic year 2025/26.
International Fees
Overseas students starting this course in the first year will be required to pay a Overseas fee of £900 for the academic year 2025/26.
Bursaries
Important note regarding tuition fees: 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.
How to apply
Home Applicants
You may apply directly to the University using the University's online application form. Please select your chosen start date from the list below:
You should have to hand:
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Details of the educational establishments you attended and dates
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Your certificates for the qualifications you are using to gain entry to the course – you will need to enter the completion date and upload copies
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Details of any employment history including name, address, dates and role
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Personal statement – this can be either input into the relevant field or uploaded separately
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Details including e-mail addresses of two referees, at least one of which should be someone who can provide an academic reference
Please make sure any documents you wish to upload in support of your application are in pdf or jpeg format. Personal statements may be word documents.
Please ensure your data is correct at each stage of the application before you proceed to the next page. If you use the back button at any time during the application, you should check the validity of the data you have already input.
If you experience difficulties during the application process, contact the Admissions Team on 01204 903394 or admissions-team@bolton.ac.uk
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Apply online: University of Bolton Advanced Professional Development Diploma Heart Failure level 7 - 22 September 2025
International Applicants
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.
Teaching & Assessment
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
The modules listed below may be a mixture of compulsory and optional. You may not have the opportunity to study all the modules shown as part of the course.
- Advanced Professional Development Diploma Heart Failure
Assessment methods
| Level | Assessment method |
|---|---|
| Level 1 | Coursework 50% Written exams 50% |
Learning Activities
| Level | Activity |
|---|---|
| Level 1 | Guided independent study 77% Scheduled learning and teaching activities 23% |
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.
