Overview
What is a Nurse?
The role of the nurse is to provide evidence-based, culturally sensitive care in order to assist the individual to lead an independent, healthy lifestyle, overcome ill health or experience a peaceful death. The nurse achieves this through working as part of a professional multidisciplinary team to provide primary healthcare, acute hospital care, community and home and continuing care, based on individual and population health needs across the lifespan.
Students of nursing learn about caring and the complexities of health and illness through interactive teaching and learning strategies in the classroom and the healthcare environment. Practice (clinical and community) experience provides the student with opportunities to integrate the art and science of nursing and promotes the development of caring relationships with patients/service users and their families/significant others.
This four-year nursing programme is offered in partnership with Tallaght University Hospital, through the Adelaide Health Foundation.
Nursing: The course for you?
Do you love working with and for the benefit of people of all ages and from diverse backgrounds?
If you want a rewarding and respected career with great employment and travel opportunities, then the professional course in nursing could be for you.
A genuine interest in people and a desire to care for others are core requirements for any individual who wishes to become a nurse. In addition, you will need to have a keen interest in healthcare and be capable of working as part of a team. Like all professional courses in health sciences, nursing places extra demands on students’ time. It can be demanding, both physically and emotionally and so you should ensure that you are in a position to fully engage with the course during your time in Trinity.
Nursing at Trinity
The School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College, has a world renowned reputation and courses are taught by academics at the top of their discipline and profession. The School is ranked first in the Republic of Ireland, 4th in Europe, and 20th worldwide in the latest QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025. With more than 1,000 undergraduate nursing students in Trinity, you will become part of a vibrant student community – the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Trinity College Dublin is the largest School of Nursing and Midwifery in the country.
You will have the opportunity to meet and mix with students from all nursing disciplines and midwifery profession as you study core modules together. You will also form cohesive bonds within your own discipline as you begin to specialise within your chosen area of nursing.
Nursing students are taught theory predominantly in the School of Nursing and Midwifery building on D’Olier Street, which is a wonderful historic building in the heart of the capital. The School is a great place to learn and interact with classmates and with its close proximity to Trinity’s main campus, nursing students are never far from the centre of student life.
Graduate skills and career opportunities
Graduates from the Trinity School of Nursing and Midwifery will be competent, innovative, and caring professionals who are capable of leading change, shaping policy and responding to an ever evolving healthcare environment.
You will be qualified to continue your education and further specialise should you wish to do so. The Trinity School of Nursing and Midwifery offers a wide range of postgraduate courses for furthering your studies.
There are QQI/FET routes available for TR091, TR093, TR095 and TR097. Please see www.cao.ie for details.
Your degree and what you’ll study
This course will provide you with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and, professional values necessary to provide high-quality, competent and caring practice in your chosen discipline of nursing. There are two components to the nursing degree course; a theoretical component and a practice (clinical/community) component.
Theoretical component
The theoretical component will be taught in the Trinity School of Nursing and Midwifery building, the main Trinity campus and in the Trinity Centre for Health Sciences in St. James’s Hospital. Teaching methods include lectures, tutorials, practical classes, clinical skills laboratories, group teaching, web-based learning and reflective workshops.
A combination of examinations, essays, clinical projects, clinical skills, laboratory techniques, literature reviews (review of past and current literature relating to the subject matter), reflective practice (thinking about an experience and reflecting on its meaning) and clinical assessments are used.
Click here for further information on modules/subjects.
Practice component
TR093 students are full-time students of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and follow the same pathway as other General Nursing students attached to TCD and Tallaght University Hospital.
Children's and General nursing
A Registered Children’s Nurse (R.C.N.) is responsible for promoting optimum health and for preventing ill health amongst children up to the age of 18, intervening where appropriate to provide holistic care for children and families.
In conjunction with the general nursing components of the course, students undertaking the Children’s and General Nursing (Integrated) course will also study the following:
- Medical nursing of infants, children and adolescents within a family-centred framework (general and specialist placements).
- Surgical nursing of infants, children and adolescents within a family-centred framework (general and specialist placements).
- Accident and Emergency nursing of infants and children within a family-centred framework.
- Operating Theatre nursing of infants, children and adolescents within a family-centred framework.
- Mental Health issues for children and adolescents and their families.
- Community nursing within a family-centred framework.
- Maternity and Neonatal Care within a family-centred framework.
Students who successfully complete this course will be eligible to apply to register with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland as a Registered Children’s Nurse (R.C.N.) and Registered General Nurse (R.G.N.)
General Nursing
As key members of the interdisciplinary healthcare team and in partnership with patients, general nurses provide for the physical, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual wellbeing of persons with acute or chronic physical illness.
The general nurse achieves this through working as part of a professional multidisciplinary team to provide primary health care, acute hospital care, home and continuing care, based on individual and population health needs across the lifespan.
This includes:
• Medical Nursing – general and specialist
• Surgical Nursing – general and specialist
• Emergency department
• Children’s nursing
• Mental health nursing
• Care of the Older Person nursing
• Primary healthcare and community nursing
• Maternity care
• Management and leadership
• Operating theatre
Students who successfully complete this course will be eligible to apply to register with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland as a Registered General Nurse (R.G.N.)
Optional international placements/opportunities during training
The Erasmus programme enables students to study at another European university as part of their university degree. This is an exciting opportunity for students to experience a core clinical placement in another European Union healthcare system for a maximum period of eight weeks duration. Erasmus exchange takes place in semester two of second year and semester one of third year.
Current Erasmus partners include (dependent upon profession or nursing discipline): Turku University of Applied Sciences, Finland; University of Malta; Lund University, Sweden; University College of Northern (UCN) Denmark, Aalborg, Denmark; Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen, Netherlands; Maastricht University, Netherlands.
Students can apply for summer international opportunities such as volunteering in Africa. Second-year general nursing students may also apply to undertake four weeks of clinical practice in the University of Sydney or the University of Queensland, Australia.
Collaborative online international learning opportunities are also provided for our high-achieving nursing and midwifery students.
