About the department
The Department of Clinical Health Care is ideally situated to support students on both prequalifying and postgraduate courses to develop the professional skills, knowledge and research required to care for and support patients in a wide variety of care settings. There is a strong emphasis on interprofessional learning and collaborative practice with all of our courses being accessed or taught by a wide range of professionals.
The department offers undergraduate (pre-qualification) and postgraduate courses in adult, children’s, learning disability and mental health nursing, operating department practice and paramedic emergency care, as well as a foundation degree in health and social care designed and delivered in partnership with local NHS and social care employers.
Once you are a qualified health care professional, we provide an extensive choice of long award courses, short courses and study days in a number of clinical specialities and for all bands of health care professions to help you to continue your professional development.
We are based on two large and well equipped sites; Marston Road, on the university’s Headington Campus in Oxford and Ferndale, a thriving campus in Swindon. Some of our courses are taught online enabling you to have greater flexibility if you are unable to attend university but want to study in a stimulating and dynamic environment.
The student experience is essential for us, and we work in close partnership with students and local health care providers to ensure that the student is at the centre of our provision. We offer a very friendly and supportive environment in which to learn, and consistently receive very high satisfaction ratings for our student support and learning resources in student surveys and practice learning from our regulatory bodies. You’ll have access to first-rate facilities including classrooms, lecture theatres, dedicated simulation skills suites and resources, which include a family of computerised simulation manikins, including a sim-man, Simbaby (newborn and an older baby under six months old), anatomy models and fully networked computer rooms. We have excellent IT and library resources, accessible both online and a via range of locally based facilities on university and NHS sites.
We benefit from excellent collaborative working with leading local health care providers such as the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, Great Western Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and NHS Swindon.
We work closely with our clinical partners across a variety of settings to offer some of the best placement experiences you could wish for to enhance your learning experience throughout your studies. Many of these settings have world class reputations for their quality and innovation and are at the cutting edge of research and practice development.
The Department also works internationally and has taught programmes in Kenya and Malaysia. Since 2008, the DipHE in Palliative Care has been taught through a franchise agreement between Nairobi Hospice, Kenya and Oxford Brookes University. The course offers practitioners from Africa and neighbouring regions the opportunity to achieve an internationally respected qualification with minimum absence from their own practice and workplace setting.
In Malaysia, we work via a franchise agreement to enable students to gain a BSc (Hons) in Nursing. We deliver also a number of online courses available for any international student - these include MSc/PGDip/PGCert Palliative Care, MSc/PGDip/PGCert Nursing Studies (Leadership in Clinical Practice), BSc (Hons) Nursing Studies, and a short course in Planning and Managing Clinical Trials.