Program Overview
The Foundation Degree in Healthcare Practice prepares healthcare assistants for advancement by developing their skills and knowledge in person-centered care, evidence-based practices, and the principles of safe and compassionate healthcare. It emphasizes work-based learning and offers diverse assessment methods, including workplace-relevant tasks. Graduates can enhance their roles in healthcare settings or pursue further academic studies, including direct entry into pre-registration nursing courses.
Program Outline
Degree Overview:
This Foundation degree in Healthcare Practice is designed for healthcare workers currently working in an assistant capacity in a range of healthcare settings. The course builds on your practice experience by offering a range of learning opportunities to ensure you develop the skills employers are looking for. The work-based course will set you off on a journey of active independent learning with appropriate support from academic and clinical staff. The knowledge and skills you acquire will equip you to become a reflective compassionate healthcare practitioner able to promote provide and maintain safe effective care of the highest quality within a multidisciplinary context and in multicultural settings.
Objectives:
- To develop competence in an assigned range of core skills relevant to the role of all healthcare practitioners.
- To equip you with the ability to respond to challenging situations which compromise quality of care and increases patient vulnerability.
- To encourage you to review service delivery within your workplace and to identify the ways in which you can improve the patient experience.
- Health And Wellbeing: Improving Lives: This unit introduces the concept of health and well-being and the role of health promotion in enabling people to increase control over their health.
- Foundations In Values Based Practice (Wbl): The aim of this unit is to enable you to develop competence in an assigned range of core skills relevant to the role of all healthcare practitioners and to enhance your understanding of the evidence base for these skills.
- Safeguarding Health And Wellbeing: The unit recognises the need to safeguard the health and wellbeing of service users and healthcare workers.
- Healthcare Policy And Quality: The aim of this unit is to help you consolidate your knowledge and understanding of what constitutes high quality compassionate healthcare by focusing on the quality standards embedded within legislation, policies and quality benchmarks at both national and local level.
Year 2:
- Enhancing Care In Practice (Wbl): The aim of this unit is to enable you to consolidate the core skills developed in year one of the course and to develop competence in more complex core skills and skills that are specific to your area of practice.
- Embedding Nhs Values In Practice (Project): All healthcare workers have responsibility for contributing to the quality enhancement of healthcare provision to patients /service users and their carers. The aim of this unit is to encourage you to review service delivery within your workplace and to identify the ways in which you can improve the patient experience.
Assessment:
The course assessment strategy is closely aligned to the teaching and learning strategy which is designed to have: immediate relevance to practice; draw on expertise-by-experience; foster active learning and be leaner-centred in approach. A distinct feature of the course is the range of assessment tasks including those that allow you to undertake workplace relevant assessments that can have an immediate impact in practice. Examples include: written assignments ranging from reflective pieces to academic essays culminating in a project at Foundation degree level assessed practice within the student's workplace; computer based examinations and oral presentations.
Teaching:
The course is taught using a variety of methods, including:
- Lectures
- Seminars
- Workshops
- Work-based learning
- Reflective practice
Careers:
If you are undertaking this course you are already employed in a healthcare role so after completing it is most likely you will continue to work as an assistant practitioner within your place of current employment with enhanced opportunities for additional responsibilities and advancement. Students who wish to continue their academic studies and top up their Foundation degree to a full Honour’s degree can do so via the University of Bedfordshire’s Healthcare Practice (Top up) BSc (Hons).
Other:
- The course has the option to be taken over four years which includes a year placement in industry.
- The Foundation Year provides an opportunity to build up your academic writing skills and numeracy, and will also cover a range of subject specific content to fully prepare you for entry to an Undergraduate degree.
- The degrees offering a Foundation Year provide excellent preparation for your future studies.
