Assistant Practitioner

This foundation degree is designed to provide you with a direct route to becoming an Assistant Practitioner within the NHS or other health and care organisation, or alternatively form the basis of your studies for preparation to work in a variety of other healthcare professions. The Assistant Practitioner role is essential to the future development of health and social care, and completing this foundation degree will quality you to work at Band 4 within the NHS.

The foundation degree is an innovative programme boasting connections with a range of placement environments, enabling you to access a range of real-life situations in both clinical and community settings, in addition to access to our simulation suite.

The embedded work-based approach to this programme will enable you to specialise in one area of practice within the health sector, communicating effectively and developing skills which will allow you to flourish both academically and in the workplace.

Each module is worth a specified number of credits: you take a combination of compulsory (and if available optional modules) enabling you to cover key subject knowledge while developing your own interests. For full time students a total of 120 credits will be studied in each academic year.

Year 1
Preparing for Clinical Skills – 20 credits
Clinical Practice (1) - 40 credits
Anatomy and Physiology - 20 credits
Principles and philosophies of healthcare - 10 credits
Person centred care - 10 credits
Therapeutic interventions - 10 credits
Effective communications - 10 credits

Year 2
Approaches to mental health and equality - 20 credits
Clinical practice (2) - 20 credits
Evidence and application of research - 20 credits
Public health and equality - 20 credits
Principles and skills for assistant practitioners - 20 credits

Plus an optional module from one of the following*:

Long term conditions
Acute and critical care: foundations for practice
Podiatry
Occupational therapy
Perioperative practice
Physiotherapy
Radiography
Speech and language therapy
Advanced holistic mental health practitioner
Intensive care practitioner
Integrated therapies
Specialist residential practitioner

• Please note, optional modules are dependent on demand and placement availability and may not run every year

There are two formal or summative assessed pieces of work for each module. Assessment methods can include written examinations and a range of coursework assessments such as essays, reports, portfolios, performance, presentations and projects. The grades from formal assessments count towards your module mark. In addition to formal assessments throughout modules of study there will be developmental (formative) assessments to support you with developing greater understanding of your progress.

The balance of assessment by examination/test, coursework and practical depends to some extent on the optional modules you choose. The approximate percentage of the course assessed by coursework is as follows:

Year 1 - 30% coursework, 37% exams/test, 33% practical
Year 2 - 45% coursework, 33% exams/test, 22% practical