I've always lived in Brighton, I'm actually a mature student, I'm 42 years old.
Hi, I'm Tess, I'm a third year mental health nursing student at the University of Brighton.
So I decided to do mental health nursing because I felt that's where most of my skills are.
I've worked with older people with dementia, schizophrenia and at a
mental health hospital just to get some experience, and I thought yeah this is
definitely what I would like to go in to.
The application process was relatively
easy I did it online through UCAS and then I got an interview very quickly.
In the first year it's like the foundation course, so you're with the
to be honest with you it may sound really daunting but it really isn't, it's
really interesting and probably one of my favourite parts of the course in the first year.
In the second year you start to sort of specialise more in your chosen
subjects, so for me it was mental health nurse nursing looking at things like
human qualities and values, and looking at the way that we can make assumptions
about people but looking at the bigger picture at the same time. So I found that
really, really helpful and now I'm in my third year one of the modules I found
really interesting is leadership. I would say that's my favourite module of
the course. I was a little bit wary of it thinking leadership, I
don't even know if I want to be a leader. I may just want to be a band five nurse
but when you start the module you can have sort of a negative impression of it,
however towards the end of it I thought actually this is really, really helpful
because all nurses need to be leaders whether you want to be a charge a nurse
or whether you want to stay at band five, essentially you are a leader, you are an
advocate for the patient so you do need to have some leadership skills so I
found that really, really interesting.
I've had the opportunity to have a variety of placements in a male acute ward, female acute ward
older people with dementia, older people with mental health issues and also
a community and a drug and alcohol placement as well, so I've literally had
a whole spectrum.
I've always lived in Brighton. I think it is without a doubt the best place to
live in the UK, so I feel very, very privileged to live here. There's
something for everybody, it's very cultural, it's very diverse
it's got a great nightlife. As I said I'm a mature student I'm 42 so I was a little
bit daunted coming in and thinking am I going to be like the oldest one here, who
am I going to talk to et cetera but what I found was on all the courses
whether you're doing mental health nursing, child nursing or whether you
choose to do adult the age range is really wide. You've got people in
their early 20s and then also people in their 40s, 50s doing the course, and
everyone gets on fine there's no problem at all. I think I've definitely
become more reflective since my first year, I feel kind of like a more rounded
person, I feel that the university's helped me sort of grow and develop and
become more like critical, so as I said before not looking at just sort of
like things black and white, looking at like gray areas as well.
I've decided that I'd like to work with older people with dementia.
I had a preconceived idea that that was what I wanted to do before I started the
course and I kind of thought well maybe I want to try working with women or like
with men but I've kind of come full circle and four actually dementia is
definitely my passion, so I've got a job at the end of the course already in a
dementia ward, so I'm really looking forward to that.
My top tip would be to not get overwhelmed with assignments and to really work on time management.
I think that's really important. I can easily get very, very stressed if I've
got a lot of deadlines so my way of sort of controlling that is to
get my assignments done quickly. I feel really lucky to be part of the
University of Brighton community I wouldn't have chosen to go anywhere
else, and I've really really enjoyed the course and I really recommend it.
If you're thinking about it you know we need good nurses. You're never too old
don't think, oh maybe I can't do this, maybe
you know maybe it's too late... it's never too late and I would just definitely say
if you are thinking about applying to the course go ahead, because you never
ever know what's in store