Nursing

• Studying: 1%
• Employed in graduate job: 90%
• Employed in non-graduate job: 2%
• Unemployed: 2%

• Average graduate salary: £22,485
• Average non-graduate salary: £17,203

A professional qualification is essential for jobs within nursing. Employers also look at your wider personal skills and abilities. For example, the way you engage with people and a strong sense of professionalism are crucial to your work as a nurse. Consider the skills developed on your course as well as through your other activities, such as paid work, volunteering, family responsibilities, sport, membership of societies, leadership roles, etc. Think about how these can be used as evidence of your skills and personal attributes. Then you can start to market and sell who you really are, identify what you may be lacking and consider how to improve your profile. 

View the best universities for nursing degrees.

Prospects

Nursing is a vocational degree. In 2010, six months after graduating, almost 85% of nursing graduates were in UK or overseas employment. Almost 8% opted to combine work with further study.

Of those who were in work, 94% were working as health or associate professionals. Just over 1% of nursing graduates were in social care and welfare jobs, while 1% had taken roles in public or private sector management. Around 2% were believed to be unemployed.

Where are the jobs?

Common employers include:

• The National Health Service (NHS) (see NHS Careers  and Careers and Opportunities in NHS Scotland );
• private sector clinics and hospitals;
• private sector healthcare providers that have been contracted to provide services to NHS patients;
• voluntary organisations;
• local authorities (for work in nursing and residential homes);
• schools and further and higher education institutions;
• industry;
• prisons and the armed forces;
• private sector organisations such as leisure cruise companies and private nursing homes.

Jobs directly related to your degree

As a trained nurse you could work as one of the following:

• Adult nurse
• Health visitor
• Learning disability nurse
• Mental health nurse
• Midwife
• Paediatric nurse
• Paramedic

Jobs where your degree would be useful

Your nursing qualification will also be applicable in the following jobs:

• Further education lecturer
• Higher education lecturer
• Social worker
• Police officer
• Counsellor

Although some of the jobs listed here might not be first jobs for many graduates, they are among the many realistic possibilities with your degree, provided you can demonstrate you have the attributes employers are looking for. Bear in mind that it's not just your degree discipline that determines your options. Remember that many graduate vacancies don't specify particular degree disciplines, so don't restrict your thinking to the jobs listed here.

Included with the permission of AGCAS and Graduate Prospects. For the latest version of this publication, see www.prospects.ac.uk. For permission to reproduce, contact copyright@agcas.org.uk. We would welcome your comments on this section of The Complete University Guide. Please email us at admin@thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk.