Branch conversion

I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience in swapping from adult to child branch.

It seems its getting harder and harder to do it these days. Ideally I'd like to be a neonatal nurse, so I'm lucky that some units take on adult nurses. But I'm really interesed in PICU too and would love to do this one day.:redpinkhe

Many thanks!!

I know of a nurse who is adult trained, moved to paeds ICU and they are apparently going to second her to do the child branch conversion. Don't know the ins and outs but it might be a way for you to do it. Also our A&E put someone through conversion as well. Might be worth your while contacting some of the paeds ICUs and see if they have any information?

Might be worth contacting your local uni to ask what options you have available. Before I retrained as a midwife I considered converting from my original Learning Disability nursing qualification to adult nursing. I searched around for conversion courses but couldnt find any so called up a local uni just to ask for some advice. I found out that they didnt officially advertise their conversion courses as they devised individual programmes for conversion dependant on your experience.

Their programmes were totally individual with course lengths ranging from the basic 14 months to 24 months dependant on how they assessed your relevent knowledge/skills. Most of their theoretical component was done online with some compulsary class time and placements were arranged by students themselves. This allowed people to continue to work whilst doing their conversion as you could arrange placements to coincide with days off.

Might be worth a phone call to see what they can offer.

Thank you both for your advice. There certainly doesn't seem to be many stragight forward ways of going about conversting. I love the idea of working in icu first, and the online learning sounds fantastic as i thought it had to be a full time course.

A lot of hospitals will second you to do the conversion if you show that you're dedicated to that branch. I think it'd help if it was the hospital you were already working in.

i did a search for branch conversion as well as still intreasted in doing mental health

seems about 1 to 2 uni per region offer these there are none in in sha