The Graduate Diploma Critical Care Nursing (Children) course aims to build upon and advance the registered nurse’s repertoire of knowledge, skills, attitudes and professional values, in order to prepare the nurse to assume the role of a nurse specialist in this area of care. The course aims to develop the practitioner’s capacities for caring and competent practice in paediatric intensive care nursing, in order to prepare the nurse to provide a patient-centred service within health care.
Programme strengths
- Students will undertake placements in clinical sites in the PICU in either the Children’s Health Ireland at Temple Street, or Children’s Health Ireland at Crumlin. You will rotate on occasion between both hospitals to experience nursing care of a wide spectrum of specialities which includes care of neonates, care of the child with a thermal injury, cardiac care, care of child post renal transplantation, care of child with a neurological disorder.
- Lectures are both clinical and university-based and are delivered by a wide range of members of the multidisciplinay team.
- There is a strong emphasis on continuous progression of clinical ability and clinical effectiveness through continuous assessment, clinical examinations, and case presentations
- The delivery of specialist modules designed to scaffold learning, commencing with fundamental concepts in children’s critical care, then advanced children’s critical care, and finally specialist concepts in children’s critical care .
- Flexible pathway – may be undertaken over 1 year full-time or 2 years part-time
- Extensive use of IT in supporting the teaching environment of the programme
- Access to excellent facilities for lectures
Programme Structure:
The course may be taken over 1 year full-time or 2 years part-time. Assessments are varied (learning pack/student debate/care presentations/clinical case review/discussion board)) and occur at intervals throughout and at the end of the trimesters. Core modules will be delivered in UCD through blended learning, while specialist and clinical modules will be delivered through theory blocks usually at clinical sites. Clinical learning outcomes are completed with a designated clinical assessor during the programme.
The specific aims of the course are:
- To build upon and advance the student’s repertoire of knowledge, skills, attitudes and professional values that were developed during the course of his/her basic training and arising out of his/her experiences in clinical practice
- To provide the student with the requisite knowledge, skills, attitudes and professional values for the advancement of his/her role in the care of infants,children, young people and their families in critical care, including critical analysis, creative thinking, decision making and communication
- To develop a greater understanding of the theory which underpins critical care practice, including theory in the social and behavioural sciences, and theory in the biomedical sciences
- To provide learning experiences that advance the student’s professional development and personal growth and experiences that affirm the student’s capacity to be a self-directed learner
- To advance the student’s sense of professional awareness, and commitment and a sense of professional responsibility and accountability in paediatric critical care
- To enable the student to value learning as a continuous process and as a necessary process in the context of his/her professional role in paediatric critical care