Community nurse

As a leading UK community nursing agency, Pulse offers a wide variety of temporary and permanent opportunities in community nursing. Find your ideal district nurse, health visitor, school nurse, healthcare assistant (HCA), and other community specialist role. We offer the widest choice of shifts across the NHS and private sector, so you can make your flexible community nursing job work for you.

Explore our range of community nursing jobs across the UK. We have a wide range of temporary and permanent community and district nursing jobs available to apply for.

What’s the difference between a community nurse and a district nurse?

The difference between community and district nurses is that a district nurse must complete additional training to become a specialist community practitioner. A community nurse, as mentioned above, provides a wide range of care to people in their community, like at their home or a nearby clinic. However, those in district nurse jobs are registered nurse who specialises in providing care to patients in their home and they typically work with patients who are recovering from long term illness or injury.

In summary, a district nurse specialises more in providing care to patients in their home, rather than the community as a whole.

What does a community nurse do?

A community nurse provides nursing care to patients outside of a hospital, for example in their home, clinics, and care homes. This includes assessment, treatment, monitoring and support. Community nurses often attend to patients who have trouble reaching a hospital, for instance if they are elderly or disabled. They’re crucial in helping to reduce hospital admissions by keeping patients in their own homes.

Community nurse jobs offer a great deal of autonomy as they manage their workload each day. Duties they may perform on a day-to-day basis are:

• Giving medication and injections
• Dressing and cleaning wounds
• Managing patients’ general health and wellbeing
• Setting up intravenous therapy (such as drips)
• Monitoring ongoing care plans and creating long-term care plans
• Cooperating with fellow local healthcare professionals
• Educating and supporting patients’ families to help them navigate the patients’ condition and needs

All registered nurses need to complete an undergraduate degree, which will usually take you three years to complete. Depending on your experience or learning preferences, you could complete a Registered Nursing Degree Apprenticeship (RNDA), or you could work towards this role. RNDAs take four years to complete and are employer-led. If you want to complete a community nurse degree apprenticeship, it is important you understand that you will need to apply for an apprentice position with a health care provider.

There may be opportunities for you to complete specialist training courses for this specialism, however, not every role requires you to complete them. Sometimes they may help you to progress through the pay bands.

Note that different healthcare providers will have their own job requirements, we advise you to research these before beginning your training.

Why find your next community nursing job with Pulse?

Are you thinking of applying for community nursing jobs? At Pulse, we put candidates and their careers first. We support candidates like you to reach their potential and exceed their career goals.

We offer a diverse range of locum and permanent positions in the NHS and private service providers, including exclusive opportunities that are only accessible through Pulse. Our rewards and benefits are second to none , making your career with us like no other.

How much does a community nurse earn?

Community nurses can start on higher salaries than general nurses because they typically need more experience and qualifications. For example, community nurses may complete a district nursing course that will move them up to band six, once they have secured a position as a district nurse.

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