BSc (Hons) in Mental Health Nursing

Our Mental Health Nursing course will provide you with excellent opportunities to develop knowledge and skills relevant to professional Psychiatric Nursing practice, including independent and critical thinking, and problem solving. It will enable you to deliver nursing care that is up-to-date and based on the best current evidence. This four-year full-time degree course is offered in partnership with the Health Service Executive (South) (HSE) and on completion you can apply to register as a Psychiatric Nurse to the Nursing & Midwifery Board of Ireland (NMBI), the profession’s regulatory body. After registration, you will be ready to start work as a qualified psychiatric nurse in a variety of clinical settings. The broad aim of the course is to promote your personal, intellectual and professional development to meet the role dimensions of a qualified practitioner of Mental Health Nursing. Each year, you will study modules in both theory and clinical practice. Clinical practice modules require you to be in supervised clinical practice in hospital, community and other healthcare settings for 35 hours per week for a number of weeks each year. Theory modules include both nursing, and biological and social science modules, some of which are core (shared with students from other nursingmidwifery branches), while others are discipline-specific (taken by Mental Health Nursing students only).

For 2025 entry, full-time degree students must normally have reached 17 years of age by 15th January 2026. Where a candidate below that age seeks to enter UCC, a special application must be made to the President of the University. Applications will be considered from applicants whose qualifications are equivalent to the Irish Leaving Certificate. Applications will be considered on a case by case basis.