Assistant Practitioner (Health)

This work-based Foundation degree builds on your existing practice experience, setting you off on a journey of active independent learning with appropriate support from academic and clinical staff. It develops your skills and equips you to become a reflective and compassionate healthcare practitioner, able to promote, provide and maintain safe, effective care within a multidisciplinary context and in multicultural settings.

Facilities and specialist equipment

• Fully immersive simulation suites with environments to prepare students for different scenarios in a supportive environment.

• High-quality teaching spaces; informal learning spaces; and lecture theatres.

Career-powered links

The course has been designed and delivered in partnership with local health and social-care employers and service users, who have shaped the curriculum to be practice-led and based on the NHS constitution.

Your student experience

Develop essential skills to offer support, care and advice when acting as the first point of contact for your clients, their carers and family.

Cover theory and practice in both real and simulated environments, ensuring you qualify with the competence and confidence needed to be a professional in the field.

During work-based learning, you are supported by practice mentors and members of the course teaching team, who visit you and work closely with your mentor.

Complete your course by identifying a service development area for focus and planning a proposal that tackles it.

On successful completion of the course, you can progress to a top-up course in a related subject, leading to a full degree and registration with the regulatory body for your chosen profession.

Course modules

Year 1
Academic skills for assistant practitioners – Learn the skills needed to become a successful learner in a university setting. Health and wellbeing: fundamentals - Explore key human body systems—like muscles, nerves, heart and lungs—and how they work together. Foundations in values-based practice – Understand the responsibilities, challenges and limitations of your professional role as an assistant practitioner. Person-centred holistic care – Be able to complete a person-centred assessment, decide on care and treatments for common conditions, and give the right support. Professional identity (assistant practitioners) - Examine the professional values, ethics and codes of practice of the role and how you apply them in practice.

Year 2
Safeguarding health and wellbeing – Learn how to handle challenging situations that put care quality at risk and make patients more vulnerable. Health care policy and quality - Review your practice against the professional, ethical and legal standards that guide healthcare. Collaborative therapies (assistant practitioner) - Use person-centred professional reasoning and team-based care planning in practice scenarios. Enhancing care in practice – Undertake supervised, hands-on care that shows you have the knowledge, skills and behaviours expected of an assistant practitioner.

We make every effort to ensure the information here is accurate; however, for the most up-to-date information, visit our website.

The assessment methods include examinations, practical skills tests, practical reports, in-class tests, critical essays, presentations and practice log book activities.