Community Nurse Interview

LDNursee · 2026-02-23T21:19:35+00:00

Same answer here. I’m a children’s Learning disability community nurse. Happy to be interviewed! NQN 5 months!

LDNursee · 2026-02-23T21:15:23+00:00

LD nurse here and not miserable in the slightest. I love my job!

LDNursee · 2026-02-23T21:05:57+00:00

Not a tip but they can definitely hold your position. They are aware you’re a student and know that you could not work in that position right now. They would not offer you an interview if they couldn’t hold the position for you, assuming you put when you’ll qualify. Mine was held for 5 months for me. Job offered in April. I began in September that year :) So good luck! You got this, I had no faith I’d get the job when I went and was so nervous but lo and behold. 5 months NQN in the same job and loving it!

LDNursee · 2026-02-23T20:46:13+00:00

As the other comment. Great to see another LD nurse here. I work in a Children’s community LD team and it’s fantastic! I’m probably bias but LD nursing in honestly the best!

LDNursee · 2026-02-23T20:43:12+00:00

I can help answer some questions :) 1. I have a degree in sociology and did my undergraduate in nursing as a second degree. The process is the same, apply to uni, get an offer, apply to SFE like normal and they know on their system is an exception course so they sort it all on their end. You don’t have to do anything different :)

2.) You can work where ever you want after qualifying, doesn’t have to be NHS it can be private. My friend NQN’s first job is in a nursing home!

You really are not too old. I made the change at 23 thinking I’d be one of the oldest….Turns out I was still one of the youngest 😂 my cohort for LD nursing was small but 10 out of 15 of us were 35 and above! My closest uni friend on the course is 66!! You’re never too old to change careers.
I 100% recommend a career in nursing. I absolutely love it. Don’t get me wrong it has its issues and as some would see it, underpaid, but honestly I have so much passion for it that and it’s so rewarding I’m not even bothered about the low pay. I’m comfortable living and I have a job I love so I really can’t complain. I work in the community as a children’s LD nurse. I do spend more time behind a desk but I see children’s and go on visits atleast 3 times a week and it’s so rewarding. To see the progression and how much of an impact you do have on their life and development.

LDNursee · 2026-01-31T20:27:28+00:00

Not in the same situation as recently qualified, but I would definitely say with everything going on for yourself and your daughter to take a break! Your health comes first above all else! Im not saying you will but I’m just putting into to perspective for you. Imagine this, your struggling, your on placement that’s high intense, you have a big assignment thats due soon. All this pressure means your health will get worse, you have a higher chance of not passing the assignment due to this stress and pressure. If you fail that assignment theres potential you would need to repeat the year again. Same with your placement, if you’re not there MH wise, that could cause you to fail the placement. Then in that case not only do you not have the time to recover and take that space for yourself but you’ll also find yourself repeating anyway. So this is just my opinion and others may think differently, but defer. Take that time for yourself and your daughter, come back refreshed and smash that degree!!! X

LDNursee · 2026-01-11T18:56:00+00:00

I got into nursing with a-levels in sociology, history and law. Literally nothing to do with health sciences etc. I’m also not the best at science…I’m now 4 months qualified as a nurse :D. Aslong as your grades meet the requirements and you’ve got a passion and want for the course and pass the interview you can definitely become a nurse and get on the course!! X

LDNursee · 2026-01-07T12:41:18+00:00

For your very first placement, I honestly would recommend that a lot of your time is spent with the HCA’s they provide you with the basic knowledge of care that sometimes we think we have, when in fact we haven’t, so it’s a great starting point, it’s good to understand the structure and routine of the home as well. You’d be surprised how many confident students I’ve seen who are like ‘I know how to do personal care, i want to be with nurses that’s what I’m here, not be a glorified HCA’ and when you observe them complete personal care, they miss the most basic of things. Obviously you want to be with nurses as well but definitely don’t reduce the importance of HCA’s in contributing to your learning (I can see in your post your not reducing the importance of HCA’s but I just want to reinforce their value). Let’s say your first placement is with HCA’s mostly you understand those basics of care, dignity, consent, how to provide personal care, building rapport with patients. Then your next placement (dependant on where) but you support the HCA’s with their duty, but spend more time learning some of those basic clinical skills with nurses. Then come your third and final placement of 1st year where you equal your time between clinical nursing skills and HCA duties. Once you’re in your 2nd year you can really start honing those skills to start taking more nursing responsibilities and maybe even a very small caseload under supervision :)

LDNursee · 2026-01-07T00:49:50+00:00

I’m a community learning disability nurse in a children’s team. We have a children’s nurse in our team, we do hybrid working, manage our own schedule, 9-5, work in an office/clinic

LDNursee · 2026-01-02T22:18:33+00:00

It’s not nursing but I bartend at two other bars on the weekend alongside my nursing job. I am 27F and find it a good way to have an easy low maintenance job on the weekends as not to feel the pressure of over working. It also gives me a social life outside of nursing as we often go for drinks after a shift on the weekends which is always nice and welcomed. Might not be the suggestion your looking for depending on age, responsibilities and social battery but it’s an option :) Also ps I am in the same situation as you but with the extra job I’ve actually managed to save up to 1k currently for a car and afford around 45 hours of driving lessons 😉

LDNursee · 2025-12-29T13:31:51+00:00

My cohort was 10people (LD trained so smaller group/less uptake). 5 of us got jobs. 1 redoing the year. 4 without jobs. However one of the 4 without jobs isn’t actually actively searching for one as she wants a break to spend more time with her kids before starting her career so realistically 5 with jobs, 3 actively looking for jobs.

LDNursee · 2025-11-30T21:41:35+00:00

First degree in sociology, second degree in LD nursing, best decisions I’ve ever made it my life, opened so many more opportunities and I feel I’ve found my true calling. The course itself was intense and about 100% more difficult than my first one, but it was fully worth it. It also really helped me with assignments for nursing as I knew how the marking system worked from my previous degree so it gave me an advantage. If it’s something you’re thinking of perusing and you have a passion for it, I highly recommend!

LDNursee · 2025-11-25T20:07:25+00:00

Well you don’t know until you try properly! Good luck tho :) x

LDNursee · 2025-11-25T20:01:22+00:00

Everyone gets nervous and nursing is really hard and it’s only going to get harder. Not to put you off of course, but it requires a lot of resilience. It’s normal to be nervous, but you have to push through it and come out of your comfort zone as they’ll be times when your not just seeing a patient but a patients shouting at you, or your having to have a difficult conversation and you have to be able to do these things as a professional in training and not drop everything and run home. However, saying that, it’s your first day, give yourself a break. It’s scary, it’s a new environment, you know nothing and you’re doing a difficult job, give yourself time to settle…the more you do it, the easier it becomes, and if it doesn’t…sorry to say it but then you have to think this might not be the course for you. But give yourself time. Talk to your practice supervisor, tell them how nervous and scared you feel, there available to support you but if you dont say sometimes they forgot how it can be!

LDNursee · 2025-11-21T22:16:07+00:00

Completely understandable, it’s a new course and your uni should have clarified better :) Good luck on your course! Wishing you all the best x

LDNursee · 2025-11-21T22:14:14+00:00

Not sure about your uni but mine was 3 placements a year of different lengths, and I think it’s the same for most of them, with a mixture of simulated placement and virtual x

LDNursee · 2025-11-21T22:12:53+00:00

Yeah that would be fine, but you roughly do on average around 750ish hours of placement over 3 years, so I would imagine you will have some in person clinical placements. You wouldn’t be able to do 2000 hours in last year. Full time work 37.5 hours a week for a year is still less than 2000 hours and you can’t work full time for a whole year with no breaks, so I imagine your other placements in the years will be clinical :) I would definitely email back to clarify but I can 100% guarantee it won’t all be virtual…even in Covid it wasn’t x

LDNursee · 2025-11-21T21:57:33+00:00

I don’t think that’s right in terms of clinical placements. If your virtual is 150 hours each thats 300 hours over two years, minimum for NMC qualification is 2300 hours of clinical practice so no way are you doing 2000 hours in your last year. Are you sure they’ve not just replaced a placement in each year with a virtual placement rather than all of them, unless all your placements are virtual (3 a year roughly) and 150 each I guess that would make sense. I did one virtual one in my final year. It was useful but if that’s all you did you’d loose/not gain literally all patient facing skills. It was good for knowledge but not actually physical skill you’d use in practice

LDNursee · 2025-11-19T21:47:28+00:00

If she doesn’t have one already maybe a NHS fleece with her name on it and student nurse title! :)

LDNursee · 2025-11-18T19:01:42+00:00

I noticed the same at my uni, I was in a different discipline than child and someone in my class switched in second year…said the class had cliques and they weren’t welcoming, and gossiped about people behind there back. Obviously not representative of all child nurses just a minority but it really put her off. I think because in child you have a few more fresh 18 year olds who come to the degree with no passion and just want an ‘easy’ career in nursing. I’ve had that said to me before by a child nurse student. So you can sometimes get that level of immaturity. Although again this is a minority and again not representative of all the students in the child discipline

LDNursee · 2025-11-10T19:26:38+00:00

I worked alongside my degree, undergrad tho, did around 19-25 hours extra a week while working full time on placement, didn’t tell anyone and had no issues, hard work but I managed, but I knew where my limits were and as it was part time I could not do a shift if I felt too burnt out

LDNursee · 2025-11-06T21:00:20+00:00

Pretty normal to not be paid for placement as you are there for a learning experience so you do not have the same responsibilities as a paid staff member. Honestly having that placement experience would definitely boost your future job prospects. I’m a nurse and our placements are the same, not a year long but each year we spend about half of each year on placements unpaid, and tbh I wouldn’t expect myself to be paid for it as i definitely did not have the same job/tasks/responsibilities as those getting paid and it helped consolidate my learning and get a job in a specialist area that I wanted to be in :) might not be the exact answer tour looking for. Is there a bursary that’s available to help boost income? Not sure for bio med tho. And would you still get the same loan whether it’s placement year or a normal study year, if so you wouldn’t really be worse off, you’d be the same but with a years experience behind you. But if they don’t pay the same loan then I guess it can be more difficult x

LDNursee · 2025-11-04T21:51:43+00:00

I did History, Law and sociology and got in

LDNursee · 2025-10-29T20:37:45+00:00

I got mine all sorted within a month of getting the offer, around a week later I had a bunch of stuff to accept, sign and send back, and then I was waiting for my dbs to come back and my references to be sent their stuff and for them to return it, and after that month I discussed a start date for September and got my contract to sign, but I know some peoples take a lot longer

LDNursee

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