Nursing Studies (Registered Nurse Adult Nursing) with Foundation Year
Nursing is a profession built on a combination of scientific knowledge, clinical skill, and compassionate care. Adult nurses work across a wide range of hospital and community settings, assessing patients, planning and delivering care, administering medications, supporting recovery, and coordinating with multidisciplinary teams to ensure that each patient's needs are met. The profession demands both intellectual rigour and emotional intelligence, requiring nurses to make sound clinical judgements under pressure while building trusting therapeutic relationships with patients and their families.
This four-year programme at the University of Surrey prepares you for registration as an adult nurse and includes a foundation year for those who benefit from additional preparation before the main nursing curriculum. You will study in a supportive environment designed to replicate the real world of professional nursing, with theory and practice integrated at every stage. You will have the time and space to develop your clinical skills before your first placement, and you will learn alongside students from other nursing courses, as well as midwifery, paramedic science, and medicine, mirroring the teamwork you will experience in professional practice.
Placements are a central and substantial part of the programme, taking you into real clinical settings where you build the competence, confidence, and professional identity that nursing requires.
On successful completion you will be eligible to register with the Nursing and Midwifery Council and practise as a qualified adult nurse. The NHS, independent healthcare, care homes, community nursing, and international healthcare settings all offer opportunities for registered nurses. Specialisation is available in many clinical areas, and further study including specialist qualifications, prescribing courses, and advanced clinical practice programmes provides routes to senior and leadership roles.
Nursing offers a career of genuine meaning and strong employment prospects.