Nursing specialties explained
When you’re training to become a nurse, the first decision you’ll make is which type of nursing you want to go into. You’ll be asked to decide between adult, children’s, mental health or learning disabilities nursing and apply for the relevant degree.
This might give the impression that there are just four types of nursing in the UK, but the truth is, it’s a varied career that could see you working in a number of specialisations.
This guide outlines the main nursing roles, their key responsibilities, the qualifications you’ll need for each type of nursing, and the salary you can expect to earn.
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This is the most common nursing specialty: 80% of all NMC registered nurses are adult nurses, according to the latest statistics.
What does an adult nurse do?
An adult nurse works with patients of all ages. They observe patients, assess their needs, plan and deliver the appropriate care. You’ll find adult nurses in places like hospital wards, patients’ homes, clinics, and outpatient units.
It’s a varied nursing role that involves a range of health conditions, including short—and long-term physical health conditions. For example, patients could be suffering from arthritis, diabetes, cancer, pneumonia, heart disease, or recovering from an injury.
Working as an adult nurse means you’ll develop broad experience, and no two days are the same. If you enjoy the diversity of this role, you can progress in your career as an adult nurse—or you can specialise in a field that you find particularly interesting, such as intensive care or surgery.
What is the working pattern of an adult nurse?
You can expect to work 37.5 hours a week on a shift pattern that includes late nights, early mornings, weekends, and bank holidays.
What is the typical adult nurse's salary?
When employed by the NHS, the typical adult nurse salary starts at band 5 of the Agenda for Change (AFC) pay system. For the 2023/4 financial year, band 5 salaries varied from £28,407 to £34,581.
As you gain experience, you can move up the pay scale by taking on other roles, such as a senior nurse. It’s possible to progress all the way up to band 8d and earn up to £96,376, but you’ll need to work as a chief nurse and have over five years of experience.
How do you become an adult nurse?
To become an adult nurse, you must have an adult nursing degree and be registered with the NMC. You can find both undergraduate and postgraduate nursing degrees that offer registration as an adult nurse.
Adult nursing specialties
Your career as an adult nurse can be incredibly varied, thanks to the broad number of nursing roles that you could move into.
Just a few of the adult nurse specialties include:
- Acute settings nurse: You’ll provide critical care in fast-paced environments, like emergency departments, intensive care units, operating rooms and high dependency units.You’ll work under pressure to care for patients with acute illnesses or injuries that typically need short-term and intensive care.
- A&E nurse: You’ll specialise in nursing within emergency care departments and will often be the first point of contact for emergency patients. District nurse: You’ll be part of the primary care team, but you’ll be mobile. This means you’ll visit people in their homes or within care homes. You’ll assess healthcare plans, monitor the quality of care, and help patients manage plans to get healthier.
- Intensive care or ICU nurse: You’ll work with critically ill patients who have serious and often complex conditions. The nature of this demanding specialism means you’ll work with fewer patients than you would on a general ward.
- Oncology nurse: You’ll support adult patients with cancer throughout their diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.
- Practice nurse: You’ll work at a GP surgery as part of the primary care team. You could do a range of things, including giving vaccinations, dealing with minor wounds, taking blood samples or conducting health screenings.
- Research nurse: You’ll work on scientific healthcare research, doing anything from planning studies, bidding for funding, or conducting research and analysing data.
- Theatre or surgical nurse: You’ll support patients and doctors during anaesthetics, surgery and recovery. You may prepare and manage surgical instruments, support an anaesthetist, or help the patient during their recovery phase.
The second most popular type of nurse is a mental health nurse, representing 13% of all registered nurses in 2023.
What does a mental health nurse do?
A mental health nurse can work with patients of any age. They help anyone who uses mental health services, as well as their relatives and carers.
The role of a mental health nurse varies. It could involve advising one patient about relevant therapies or social activities while making sure another takes their medication correctly. You’ll find mental health nurses in hospitals, often within psychiatric wards or specialist units, or working in the community at health centres or patients' homes.
In addition to the clinical side of nursing, mental health specialists will get training in the legal context of working in this discipline. You’ll learn how to identify whether and when someone could be at risk of harming themselves or others, for example.
Establishing trust and building relationships quickly is a critical part of being a mental health nurse. You’ll need to quickly build rapport with patients so they feel comfortable opening up about their situation, which will help them get the best outcome from their care.
What is the working pattern of a mental health nurse?
Like an adult nurse, you should expect to work 37.5 hours a week. However, the shift pattern for mental health nurses varies greatly, depending on where you’re based. For example, working in the community may lend itself to more traditional 9-5 shifts, but if you work in a residential setting, you may need to work shifts to provide 24-hour care.
What is the typical mental health nurse's salary?
The standard mental health nurse salary is band 5 on the NHS AFC pay system.
It’s possible to grow your salary as your career progresses and you take on other roles. For example, a mental health nurse consultant earns a band 8a salary. For 2023/4, the band started at £50,952 and went up to a maximum of £57,349.
How do you become a mental health nurse?
You will need to take a mental health nursing degree and register with the NMC to become a mental health nurse.
Mental health nursing specialties
Training as a mental health nurse is just the beginning of your career. There are a number of opportunities to develop your skills and specialise in areas of focus or the types of places where you care for patients.
Some of the mental health nursing roles you might be interested in include:
- Addiction or substance misuse nurse: You’ll help patients with specialist addiction treatment, which could include psychosocial and pharmacological interventions, harm reduction, and risk management.
- Community psychiatric nurse: You’ll work in a range of settings within the community to provide mental health assessments, manage medication, and offer other forms of treatment. You will work closely with patients and work with them for a much longer period of time to deliver holistic, person-centred care.
- Forensic mental health nurse: You’ll work with patients within the criminal justice system to manage and treat their mental health issues. Forensic mental health nurses could work in police custody to assess people in police cells, in prisons, or in secure hospital settings.
Just under 8% of all registered nurses are children’s nurses. It’s the nursing specialism with the most growth, increasing by 72% between June 2010 and 2023.
What does a children’s nurse do?
Children’s nurses work with patients across a whole range of ages, from newborn babies to adolescents.
They come into contact with a range of conditions and are trained to observe and interpret a child’s behaviour to monitor how well their treatment is working. One of the key skills of children’s nurses is the ability to put children at ease and build strong bonds with them and their families.
When working in hospitals, children’s nurses often support parents and carers when their child is admitted and advise them on how to provide ongoing care at home. They can also be found in other settings, including GP practices, health centres, children’s care homes, or within the community.
What is the working pattern of a children’s nurse?
As a children’s nurse, you’ll also work around 37.5 hours, and you may need to work a shift pattern that includes nights, evenings, weekends, and bank holidays.
What is the typical children’s nurse's salary?
A children’s nurse salary is also band 5 on the AFC pay scale. It’s possible to progress up the pay scale with different roles; you could become a school nurse, for example, and get a band 6 salary. If you become a modern matron, you could earn up to £57,349 (in 2023/4).
How do you become a children’s nurse?
You must complete a children’s nursing degree and register with the NMC to become a children’s nurse.
Children’s nursing specialties
Children’s nursing is broad, which gives you the chance to specialise further if you find a particular type of nursing or age range resonates more strongly with you.
The range of roles you could progress to include:
- Neonatal nurse: You’ll care for newborn babies who are premature or sick with a range of conditions like respiratory difficulties or nutritional needs. In hospitals, neonatal nurses work in intensive care, high dependency and special care baby units, but you’ll also find them in the community to support babies who have been recently discharged.
- Paediatric oncology nurse: You’ll work with child cancer patients and their families to support them from diagnosis through to treatment and after treatment.
- School nurse: These specialist community public health nurses work with school-aged children and their families to improve health and well-being outcomes. You’ll be based in schools, health centres or within the community and lead a team of community staff nurses and nursery nurses to deliver efficient services.
Just over 2.2% of registered nurses are learning disability nurses. They play a vital role in improving or maintaining a patient’s physical and mental health, reducing any barriers to their independence, and supporting them in living a fulfilling life.
Learning disability nurses work in people’s homes, in residential or community centres, in educational settings, and in hospitals.
You’ll need to have a learning disability nursing degree and register with the NMC. Like other nursing specialisms, you’ll start off with a band 5 salary and work 37.5 hours a week.
Perhaps the most important thing to know is that conversion courses allow you to transfer between each type of nursing.
For example, if you begin your career as a registered adult nurse, you could study for a year to get registered as a specialist community public health nurse and go on to work as a health visitor or school nurse. You can choose whether to study for a or an MSc at King’s.
Nursing offers a varied career
As these nursing specialties show, there are so many different pathways you could take in building a diverse and interesting career.
You may start your nursing career in clinical practice, but you could go on to advanced practice, move into management, or take a leadership programme and become a manager in a clinical practice.
It’s also possible to step away from clinical care and move into a research-focused role. As an experienced nurse, you could become a researcher or work as an academic or a teacher.
The important thing to remember is that the nature of nursing is constantly changing, and that brings new opportunities to develop your knowledge and skills.