FdSc Assistant Practitioner in Health and Social Science has been designed to meet the needs of a variety of individuals and employers, while reflecting the diversity and scope of caring for service users in a variety of setting. Primarily it is aimed at health or social care assistants or support workers who are employed within settings such as hospitals, primary care services, nursing and residential units, domiciliary care or for those working with people within the voluntary sector.
The programme will include face-to-face teaching at a specified university site (or it could be delivered within the workplace or partner site if appropriate), online learning and will always be in collaboration with work-based learning when you will need to apply taught theoretical content to your practice area. The taught elements aim to support you in developing underpinning concepts necessary for your role.
20% of the programme will be completed in university. Ideally this will one day per week, but it may be in weekly blocks throughout the academic year to meet the needs of employers. The 80% work-based learning element means you will need to be working at least 30 hours in a clinical practice area, either health or social care and have an allocated mentor, who will support you throughout your work-based learning and assess your level of competency. Support from a link lecturer aims to ensure your personal and professional development to becoming an Assistant Practitioner. You will be given the support to enable you to deliver high quality, person-centred care, having a clear understanding of the professional codes of practice that underpin your practice.
Face-to-face teaching methods include lectures, workshops, tutorials and learning activities to introduce the main concepts and issues that are core to the programme. Tutorials will help you to develop your understanding of key topics and concepts, supported by using reflection on practice, case studies and group work.
The module tutors liaise with Specialist Practitioners who frequently support teaching on specific modules to help you synthesise some of the theoretical and practical elements of the course. Interprofessional elements of the programme will allow you to understand the role of other professionals working within the health and social care environment, enabling a better understanding of how collaboration can promote more holistic, patient-centred care.
Online work is support by the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Blackboard which will support the face-to-face sessions at university, allowing formative feedback to help your professional development. It will act as a means of communicating with other students as well as the course or module tutors, supporting discussions and being an interactive tool to create a more stimulating and innovative learning environment.
This programme is flexible to ensure it can meet the needs of learners who only work part-time, or who may have commitments that would make a full-time course unrealistic. This is based on a 3-year programme, with learners studying 120 credits over two 18-month periods, allowing longer time for both academic progression and achieving practice based competencies. This may be extended for any learners who, for unforeseeable issues need to study outside the traditional routes.
There are opportunities for the course to be adapted to ensure the needs of employers are met, with negotiable modules at both level 4 and level 5. This can allow you to negotiate a specific area of study 6 in collaboration with your Lecturers and your employer, for example, medication management, radiography skills, dementia care, long term health conditions, palliative care, theatre nursing etc. This allows a high degree of flexibility ensuring learners can study as well as work in their area of specialist interest therefore encouraging better engagement, whilst employers will have trained staff in specialist subject areas.
