United Kingdom · Four fields of nursing, plus the associate route

Choosing a field, getting in, and knowing what it pays

Adult, mental health, children’s and learning disability nursing, plus the nursing associate role as a route into registration. Approved courses and training routes if you are trying to get in; Agenda for Change pay across all four nations, employer workforce data and the career ladder if you are already in. Compiled from published open data, with every figure traceable to its source.

A nurse in scrubs reviewing patient information on a tablet

Photo: Direct Media / StockSnap, CC0

5 Professions covered Four fields of practice, plus the nursing associate role
14 Approved courses Pre-registration, all UK nations
11 Universities Providers with at least one approved course
£32,073 Band 5 starting salary England, 2026/27, before London weighting

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The fields of nursing practice

Adult, mental health, children’s and learning disability nursing are separate pre-registration fields with separate entry routes — plus the nursing associate role, a distinct registration in its own right and a route into one of the four. Each hub covers what the work is, every way in, what it costs and what it pays.

Built on open data, and it says where everything came from

Course approval comes from the regulators. Pay comes from the Agenda for Change circulars. Funding comes from NHS BSA, SAAS, HEIW and the Department of Health in Northern Ireland. Workforce and vacancy figures come from NHS England’s monthly statistics.

Every page carries the sources it used, with the licence each one is published under. If a figure is not in the open data, the page says so rather than estimating it.

How this site is built · Sources and licensing

242 NHS employers
2 Apprenticeship standards
4 Funding schemes
3 September 2026 Dataset built