Paramedic Science BSc (Hons) – 2019 entry

Why choose this course

This exciting and stimulating programme will provide you with the opportunity to develop the knowledge and skills required to work as an articulate and confident paramedic who is able to make professional judgements and deliver evidence-based care to clients.

With an emphasis on working in practice during Professional Training placements, our course will give you the opportunity to explore many areas of paramedic practice.

What you will study

This three-year course is divided equally between academic study and practical experience in a range of practice areas. The course has been jointly developed by the University of Surrey, the University of Brighton and the South East Coast Ambulance NHS Foundation Trust.

You will acquire the knowledge and skills to respond to the diverse needs of patients, families and carers within a variety of settings. You will also explore and further develop the values required in modern healthcare and stated within the NHS Constitution.

The programme is academically demanding and includes practice placements which present new and sometimes challenging experiences. We will provide you with strong personal and academic support to help you succeed.

Professional recognition

BSc (Hons) - Health and Care Professions Council, the (HCPC)
Approved by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) for the purpose of providing eligibility to apply for registration with the HCPC as a paramedic.

Careers and graduate prospects

We offer careers information, advice and guidance to all students whilst studying with us, which is extended to our alumni for three years after leaving the University.

Our paramedic science students have excellent employment prospects on completing the programme.

Exciting changes are taking place in today’s NHS. Healthcare practitioners are learning new skills, working independently and taking on new responsibilities. Qualified paramedics are increasingly found at the heart of multidisciplinary teams.

Career paths in modern NHS ambulance trusts include specialist practice, GP and community services, teaching, management and research.

As a practitioner, you can also combine a number of roles and remain directly involved in client care as your career progresses.

Learn more about life as a paramedic on the NHS careers website and read about what it's like to work as a paramedic.

Student life

Are you curious about life as a paramedic student? Read our ‘Week in the life’ feature to discover what a typical week looks like for a first-year paramedic student.

Placements

Our BSc Paramedic Science programme consists of 50 per cent theory and 50 per cent practice. The practice component is gained within ‘placements’.

Time spent in the safe environment of our Simulation Suite, and other areas in the pre-hospital environment will prepare you for your Professional Training placements. You will only go out to practice areas when you have satisfactorily completed instruction in fundamental clinical skills.

Our placement localities have practice learning teachers and practice liaison tutors who will be able to advise you about their particular practice areas. Once in your placement, you will work under the supervision of a mentor/practice placement educator and a team of co-mentors.

They assess your practice and developing skills and advise you on the progress of your portfolio of experience and your professional development.

As you progress through the programme and your skills and confidence develop, you will be encouraged to perform increasingly complex activities in practice, until you are considered by your mentors and teachers to be competent for registration at the end of Year 3.

NHS partnerships

Your practice placements will be undertaken within the South East Coast Ambulance NHS Foundation Trust and other healthcare settings across a wide geographical area, allowing you to gain a range of experiences.

Placements will feature practical supervised experience in, for example, ambulance stations and ambulance vehicles, operating theatres, coronary care units, minor injury centres, accident and emergency departments, maternity, mental health and children’s units, and specialist ambulance services.

You will work alongside qualified healthcare, social care and emergency care staff. Your placements will give you the opportunity to put your skills into practice early in the programme. You will have opportunities to participate in interprofessional learning in both University and practice settings, working alongside fully qualified paramedics and other clinicians.

South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust

South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SECAmb) is part of the National Health Service, responding to 999 calls from the public, urgent calls from healthcare professionals and providing NHS 111 services across the region.

It also provides non-emergency patient transport services (pre-booked patient journeys to and from healthcare facilities) in the area.

SECAmb deals with a geographical area of 3,600 square miles (Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, West Sussex, Kent, Surrey, and north-east Hampshire), which includes densely-populated urban areas, sparsely populated rural areas and some of the busiest stretches of motorway in the country.

Staff in SECAmb work across 110 sites spread around Kent, Surrey and Sussex, including ambulance stations, community-response posts and emergency dispatch centres. The University of Surrey placements are restricted to the Surrey localities listed on this page.

SECAmb staff care for patients either face-to-face, or provide clinical advice and support over the phone at one of their two emergency dispatch centres.

Patients range from the critically ill and injured who need specialist treatment, to those with minor health and social care needs who can be treated at home or in the community.

Further information about localities and accommodation

Further information about localities and accommodation opportunities within each of the localities is provided to the students at the start of the programme and within local induction to the practice environments.

The accommodation provision varies between the localities and usually comprises students organising privately rented flat-sharing or house-sharing via local agents.

All students can be accommodated within University campus accommodation for the commencement of their programme but students may wish to move into their geographical locality when their placements start.

This enables the student to travel to and from placements with ease, and better enables students to get to placements for the start times of shifts (which can be as early as 6am) and back home when they finish (which can be after midnight and 2am), and attend for night duty which is a requirement of the programme.

The theory component of the programme is taught within the University campus in Guildford for all students, irrespective of locality, for the duration of the programme. It is advised that students have access to their own transport in these instances.

Process for student allocation to locality

There are limited placements within each locality and so each new cohort of students must be divided up between localities to ensure a high quality practice experience for all.

A priority system exists when allocating students to localities, to ensure the needs of those students with specific geographical requirements are met, as much as is possible within the limited capacity in each location.

The priority system identifies the following:

• Sponsored students are placed within the locality where the sponsoring trust has placements.
• Students with dependants are placed in the locality nearest to their address, as far as capacity allows.
• Students living in their own homes (or the parental home) at the start of the programme are placed in a locality as near to their home address as possible, as far as capacity allows.
• Students who opt to live in University accommodation for the start of the programme are allocated according to home address to the nearest possible locality, as far as capacity allows.

It must be noted that placements within the locality may still be some distance from the student’s address and travelling to placements within the full geographical area of the allocated locality will be required in order to meet the practice component of the paramedic science programme.

It is advisable that students have their own transport when attending placement, due to the unsociable shift start and finish times when public transport will not be available.

There are limited opportunities to change a student’s allocated locality but this depends upon capacity at the preferred locality. The first-year leader will explain the process for this at the start of the programme.

Student placement localities

The University of Surrey is very fortunate to have a broad range of excellent placements within Surrey.

This geographical area is divided up to enable students to be allocated to one distinct area, enabling the student to become a member of that community of healthcare practitioners. We refer to these geographical divisions as ‘localities’.

There are four geographical localities serving paramedic science programmes at the University of Surrey. Each locality has ambulance station placements provided by South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, and district general hospital placements. It is in these placements that paramedic students gain their practical experiences.