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MMHN
Start date(s)
September 2025
UCAS Code
Course specifications
Course length
Full-time (2 years)
Campus location
University: City Campus
UCAS points calculator

Why choose this course?

Masters of Mental Health Nursing (MMHN) – pre-registration, Full-Time 2 years

Our Masters of Mental Health Nursing (MMHN) is for graduates who on successful completion can gain a Master’s degree and become qualified Mental Health Nurses. Studied full-time, this accelerated 2-year course aims to prepare you to become evidence-informed, compassionate and competent Mental Health Nurses.  If you want to become a qualified nurse, hold a minimum of 2:2 degree, and have 720 hours of previous caring experience of paid or voluntary hands-on patient care in the last 5 years then this exciting course could be for you.  

WHY CHOOSE THIS COURSE?

Our Masters of Mental Health Nursing (MMHN) is for graduates who on successful completion can gain a Master’s degree and become qualified Mental Health Nurses. Studied full-time, this accelerated 2-year course aims to prepare you to become evidence-informed, compassionate and competent Mental Health Nurses.  If you want to become a qualified nurse, hold a minimum of 2:2 degree, and have 720 hours of previous caring experience of paid or voluntary hands-on patient care in the last 5 years then this exciting course could be for you.  

This course offers graduates an accelerated route to becoming a qualified Mental Health Nurse, and at the same time rewards students studying at level 7 with an opportunity of a Master's degree. Taught in a variety of ways, on campus, blended, and online, this course recognises the need for flexible delivery, supporting students to complete a full-time vocational course within the context of busy lives; enabling you to balance your studies with personal commitments. 

Become a Registered Mental Health Nurse

It is an exciting time to join the nursing profession, now widely respected as being fully professional, progressive and evidence-informed. As a Mental Health Nursing Master’s student you will be offered a teaching and learning experience from experienced and passionate nursing staff recognised nationally as giving outstanding student support.  Clinical placements are specially selected to offer a diverse clinical and caring experience giving opportunities to pursue a range of exciting career pathways in nursing.

The course is designed to ensure you experience diversity in clinical experience.  You will learn to nurse and care in multi-cultural and diverse clinical and community environments. Learning to provide proficient and informed care in a variety of acute inpatient and community settings.   

Hands on experience

Nursing is a hands-on profession working with patients, families, carers and with interprofessional colleagues.  Therefore, as a Nursing and Midwifery (NMC) approved course, 50% of learning is on practice placement and 50% theory either on campus, blended or online.

Range of Career Opportunities

This MMHN course has been closely developed with local trust partners to reflect the increasing and rapidly changing requirements in patient care provision. Opportunities within nursing are vast: working clinically, becoming a manager, working in a research environment, working abroad and in education.

What happens on the course?

Course Modules

Problem-based learning approaches are used to help you link real-world nursing examples to practice, helping also to develop your academic skills alongside opportunities for skills simulation in our clinical laboratories. Your learning will be supported by academic experts and researchers in the field of Mental Health Nursing and inter-professional learning with other healthcare disciplines. Recognising diversity in learning, modules are assessed in different formats, by written assignments, exams and presentations. 

Course module content meets the requirements for this NMC-approved course, ensuring standards are met for: being an accountable professional, promoting health and preventing ill health, assessing needs and planning care, providing and evaluating care, leading and managing nursing care and working in teams, improving safety and quality in care and co-ordinating care.

Nursing placements

The NMC require that sufficient clinical hours are completed and assessed on clinical placements; 50% of the course is on clinical placement.  Whilst on clinical placement you will experience working full-time hours, including at times weekends and night shifts.  Experiencing the work pattern of qualified nurses.

Course learning experience – combining theory with practice learning

The course timetable is organised to ensure two key factors for your learning:

  • Theory modules are flexible, taught and assessed in a variety of ways, recognising diversity in how we learn
  • Practice learning mirrors the real world of nursing practice, and provides a platform to enhance clinical learning

Based on these principles, theory is taught mostly in the first half of the year with clinical placements in the second half of the year.  Whilst studying theory, the course is designed to ensure that learning is optimised by choosing the right moment to learn on campus, for example, clinical skills, or in class, for example in group learning, or online, for example preparing for evidence-based projects.  Clinical practice proficiency, in our view, is best developed by having blocks of time in clinical practice.  So you will benefit from spending several weeks on placement in the world of nursing practice!

Placements will be undertaken with one of six NHS Trusts; The Royal Wolverhampton TrustWalsall Healthcare NHS TrustThe Dudley Group NHS Foundation TrustSandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS TrustBurton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and most recently Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust, or in private health organisations. 

For more information on placements and locations, visit our nursing placements page.

Course Modules

Potential Career Paths

Successful completion of Master’s in Mental Health Nursing will lead to registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), opening up the prospect of many jobs in clinical practice; hospital or community settings; research; teaching; or managerial roles.

Mental health nurses work in a variety of diverse settings caring for adults of working age and older people who are experiencing mental health problems. Mental health nurses work alongside many other professionals including social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, occupational therapists, and GPs to plan and deliver person-centred care. Registered nurses continue to study after they have qualified, often in a specialist area, as they develop their career paths within the UK or working abroad.

Additional Information

Everything you need to know about this course!

We have invested in our state-of-the-art skills facilities at both City Campus and Walsall Campus.  The City skills labs have an immersive simulation suite, meaning we can change the environment without moving the students – so we can recreate a road traffic accident, simulate someone who is having an acute mental health crisis, or produce an imitation intensive care unit. Through these simulations, you will get a sense of the environment you may end up in when you are in clinical practice and apply appropriate responses. At our Walsall Campus we have new, expanded clinical skills laboratories, which provide a safe, non-threatening environment for teaching and practice.  The skills and simulation facilities include several mock hospital ward rooms, a mock bedsit, and a terraced house to practice in as well as using the latest technology with access to an anatomage table. The facilities are Panopto-enabled, which allows sessions to be filmed and played back to give a patient’s eye-view. We also have skills labs at Telford and Burton Campuses.

Work started in October 2021 on a new £5million health and social care training centre. The new Marches Centre of Excellence in Healthcare, Allied Health & Social Care will provide state-of-the-art training facilities for the next generation of health workers at our Telford Campus.

You will gain hands-on experiences in a variety of places including hospitals, the community, and excellent nursing/residential homes, where you work alongside a range of healthcare and other professionals. You will experience opportunities for inter-disciplinary learning across all nursing pathways and with midwifery, social work, and social care.

When you apply to the University of Wolverhampton, you will be allocated your placement areas usually within a local trust depending on availability. Students always evaluate this well as it means you get to know your local Trust – the Trust gets to grow their own workforce, and you as the student have a greater chance of earning a job at the end of your course.

All of the staff that teach you on this course are registered nurses. You will benefit from the team’s expertise, which draws on a wealth of different experiences including: acute inpatient care, community care, and experience as advanced nurse practitioners, ward managers, and commissioners.

As a registered mental health nurse you will:

  • meet the NMC Standards of proficiency for pre-registration nursing education.
  • provide nursing care that is safe, effective, and ethical, and assume full responsibility and accountability for your own practice as a nurse registered on the NMC register within the legal framework of the country in which you are employed.
  • reflect upon and critically evaluate evidence to reach sound nursing judgements and exercise effective decision-making in complex situations within the mental health sphere of practice.
  • critically examine the impact of political, professional, and social contexts on your provision of person-centred mental health nursing care within the context of a multidisciplinary team.
  • effectively apply your learning to identify, manage, and lead enterprising innovations and service improvements in mental health nursing practice.
  • demonstrate competence in the use of advanced technologies to quality assure, enhance your mental health nursing practice, and maintain your life-long learning.

Location Mode Fee Year
Home Full-time £9250 per year 2022-23
Home Full-time £9250 per year 2023-24
Home Full-time £9250 per year 2024-25
Home Full-time £9535 per year 2025-26

These fees relate to new entrants only for the academic year indicated for entry onto the course, any subsequent years study may be subject to an annual increase, usually in line with inflation.

 

  • All candidates must hold an Honours degree (Bachelor) at 2:2 or above. 
  • Candidates must have GCSE grade C/4+ (or equivalent) in Mathematics and English.
  • Please note we do NOT accept GCSE Short Courses or GCSE Equivalence Tests from other institutions or organisations.
  • Applicants who are not from the UK are required to have an English Language Qualification IELTS level score of 7 or above.
  • Post graduate applicants will have to demonstrate a minimum of 720hrs experience (paid or unpaid) in a health care setting in order to establish caring attributes, commitment and resilience for a career in nursing. This experience must involve hands-on direct patient care assisting with activities of daily living to include areas such as patient hygiene and mobility. The portfolio wil provide applicants with the opportunity to demonstrate how their prior degree and healthcare experience contribute to the knowledge and skills nurses are required to achieve by the end of their training alligned to the NMC Future nurse: Standards of proficiency (2018). Applicants must demonstrate competence through completing a reflective portfolio in order to meet the NMC requirements for a shortened course and fulfil the NMC requirements of accreditation of prior learning.
  • All applicants are required to complete a recognition of prior learning experience portfolio as evidence as part of the entry requirements. Failure to meet deadlines of submission of evidence would result in withdrawal from the application process. All offers are also based on a satisfactory occupational health report and receipt of a satisfactory enhanced disclosure and barring service (DBS) certificate.
  • There will be continuous opportunity for you to submit evidence for your portfolio however it has to be completed by June 2024 and all outstanding admission requirements by July 2024
  • Applicants will also be required to provide satisfactory personal statement and reference (academic or employer).
  • All offers are subject to a successful values based interview

Read further information regarding interview preparation

Free Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) and Occupational Health Check:

Due to the professional nature of some of our courses you may also be required to complete a Declaration of Health and Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) Check.  We will coordinate both of these non-academic conditions with you should your course require this and you receive an offer from us

There will be no cost for the DBS this is free to applicants who have secured an offer and have chosen to study at the University of Wolverhampton.

Student Visa Requirements

Applicants who require a student visa to enter the UK are not eligible to be considered for this course. 

Skilled Worker Visa Requirements

Applicants who are in the UK on a Skilled Worker Visa or are a dependent of a Skilled worker are not eligible to be considered for this course. 

Don't have GCSE English and/or Maths? Take our Equivalency Assessments

We understand that not everyone is able to achieve GCSE Maths and English for a variety of reasons. Our equivalency assessments provide an opportunity for you to further your English and/or Maths skills ready for your studies, as well as being able to meet part of the entry requirements for many of our undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Our online equivalency assessments are free of charge and accepted as the equivalent to a GCSE for the majority of our courses, however applicants of Initial Teacher Training courses will need to sit an on-campus equivalency test which costs £35. Find out more about our equivalency tests.

“The course is just excellent; I can truly say I’m thoroughly enjoying the way it has been designed as I think it does challenge the divide of Mental health /Physical health as well as offering a wealth of knowledge to explore”


“Not only have we received the knowledge and skills to be nursing registrants but we have also been taught how to lead person-centred care. As a part of the course, I have reflected upon my own values and moral compass which has not just been useful for my professional life but also my personal life.” NSS Student Feedback (National Student Survey)

Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC)

Recognised by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) for the purpose of registration as a qualified nurse (mental health).

Tuition Fees Loan (Home Fee Status):

By studying an undergraduate or postgraduate pre-registration programme you are eligible for a Tuition Fee loan. of up to £9,250. The loan will support your studies and enable you to start a rewarding career in healthcare.


Changes for EU students:

The UK government has confirmed that EU students starting courses from 1 August 2021 will normally be classified as Overseas (International) students for fee purposes. More information about the change is available at UKCISA:

EU citizens living in the UK with 'settled' status, and Irish nationals living in the UK or Ireland, will still be classified as Home students, providing they meet the usual residency requirements, for more information about EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) click here.


NHS Learning Support Fund

All eligible nursing , midwifery and most allied health professionals' students on pre-registration courses will also receive a Training Grant of at least £5,000 per year that is not means-tested and will not have to be repaid.

An additional payment of up to £3,000 per academic year will be available to eligible students;

• £2,000 for students with children towards childcare costs

• £1,000 Special Subject Payment on certain shortage specialism courses

Among others, the shortage specialisms have been confirmed to include:

• Mental health nursing

• Learning disability nursing

• Podiatry

Please note that this additional NHS funding is not available for students on the Foundation Year of a 4-year degree


Additional funding:

The Learning Support Fund also offers students additional support while studying for their degree. This includes:

• Additional travel and accommodation costs to clinical placements over their normal daily travel costs

• An exceptional hardship fund of up to £3,000 per student per academic year


You can find more information on the NHS Business Services pages.

Telephone

01902 32 22 22

Email

enquiries@wlv.ac.uk

Online

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