Child and Adolescent Health Nursing

Overview

Overview

The Graduate Diploma in Child and Adolescent Health Nursing offers effective and specific education for generalist, child and adolescent community health nurses to prepare practitioners capable of fulfilling these diverse practice roles.

Community health nursing is modelled on a primary health care framework with the aim of promoting health, preventing disease, implementing early intervention strategies, managing individual cases and working in collaborative partnerships with clients. Embodied in the primary health care approach are the primary, secondary and tertiary levels of prevention that are provided by community health nurses.

Given the autonomous work, nurses practising in the community must have professional skills and specialist preparation in these areas of community health nursing. The practice domain includes individuals, families, groups and whole communities. Australia's diverse multicultural society necessitates that community health nurses are able to provide evidence based social-cultural health support to the profession and members of the community.

Students will develop effective health research skills and learn to critically evaluate research findings and incorporate evidence-based knowledge into their community health nursing practice.

Please refer to the handbook for additional course overview information.

How this course will make you industry ready

Graduates from this course will have the clinical competencies to practise at various professional levels in child and adolescent health nursing, across an extensive range of population groups.

Currently Curtin University is the sole educational provider in Western Australia for this course. Curtin maintains close collaboration with agencies providing child and adolescent health services in the community, ensuring that the course materials are relevant and up to date.

What you'll learn

• analyse psychosocial determinants to effectively integrate principles of primary health care into practice to maintain optimal wellbeing of the individual, family and community
• identify, analyse the environmental, physical and psychosocial aspects of the individual, family and/or community to determine and plan holistic, evidence based health care needs within a community practice setting
• locate, extract and interpret relevant evidence and scientific literature; evaluate and synthesise the evidence to inform decision making in community health nursing practice
• demonstrate quality written, oral and interpersonal communication skills in academic, professional and community health care contexts; promote nursing health care within the community in the context of public health policy
• use appropriate technologies to practice child and adolescent health nursing practice; collect and manage information ethically and effectively
• demonstrate ability in interdependent and self-directed learning; identify the use of lifelong learning skills and ability to incorporate learning opportunities in nursing practice
• recognise national and global child and adolescent health issues and strategic health care directions; relate these to child and adolescent health nursing practice; integrate international evidence based practice into community health nursing practice
• provide culturally aware and respectful health care provision to multicultural groups and Indigenous communities; integrate principles of cultural security, advocacy and social justice into the care of all clients
• analyse impacting sociocultural environments to demonstrate professional and ethical practice in child and adolescent health nursing; work collaboratively within an interdisciplinary health care team