A career in nursing is fulfilling and rewarding for many who are interested in clinical practice, but more interested in patient care. A nursing career, as a general rule, will provide more contact time with a wider range of patients, but will also mean that you are less involved in diagnostics than other medical practitioners.
Different nursing degrees are also available if there is a particular branch of nursing you are interested in, such as adult nursing, paediatric nursing or mental health.
Many nursing degrees will have a larger practical focus than other alternatives to Medicine, as they are vocational degrees, with most graduates directly entering the field. As an estimate, around half your degree time will be actively spent on placements learning clinical skills.
Prior to these placements, you will be trained for clinical settings in a pre-clinical classroom environment. This is done through a combination of lectures and classroom-based learning, but also through practising clinical skills in a safe, non-healthcare environment. This allows you to build up your nursing skills early on in your studies, which will help you to gain confidence before you are required to apply them in a clinical setting.
Dentistry is a highly competitive degree, and is similar to Medicine in that it has high levels of applicants per place and similar challenges to those of medical school admission.
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