HI Luna
I think to be honest, the whole issue comes down to three things:
-How willing are you to wait for a place on a child health course? The popularity of them is often to do with the 'desirability' of dealing with children. One thing to bear in mind is that you will also have to deal with the parents of those children.
Also, no child is supposed to die, so callous as this may sound, you won't have the solace of, for example, knowing that your patient was extremely old and had reached the end stages of their life.
Admissions officers are going to want to see evidence, both on your application and at interview, that you know something of the nature of children's nursing (try to read about 'family-centred models of care' to get an idea of the approach of children's nursing towards patients and their families). Also the complexities of bridging the gap between the child as your patient and their family also as your patient. Sometimes there are conflicts between the two.
-How willing are you to travel for work? Harsh reality is that the percentage of children's wards in ratio to adults is tiny. For example, in one of my local hospitals there is just one children's ward and ten's of adult wards. This isn't necessariily a big problem, except that there will always be greater competition for child nursing posts. The knock on effect of this is a phenomenon called 'dead man's shoes' in desirable posts, low turnover of staff. The other factor that goes along side this, is that you won't be qualified to do temporary work on adult wards.
-As rightly pointed out, if you choose adult nursing, there is a lot of 'basic need provision' on the majority of general wards. You will rarely find a ward where there are not patients who need assistance with their basic bodily functions or mobility.
-Do you see yourself as being hospital based for most of your career? Opportunities in the community for Child Branch Nurses are not plentiful, but do exist. Mainly health visiting, School nursing or community specialist nursing, but very competitive. Obviously, with more adults needing care from the NHS, there are more opportunities in the community with adult nursing.
In answer to your main questions, I don't think adult nursing is, in itself regarded as any better than children's nursing, but I do think it is regarded as more transferrable, hence the ability to retrain in 18 months as opposed to 3 years for other branches.
I have been lucky enough in my short career to work in some very interesting settings as an adult branch nurse:
Firstly Neurosurgical Ward, then neuro theatres, where I was mainly a recovery nurse (being so specialist, we dealt with children as well as adults), but also did scrub nurse work for interventional radiology (x-ray guided procedures using special wires into the arteries of the brain to investigate or treat brain blood vessel problems).
I moved on to Neonatal Intensive Care (not really my cup of tea - very 'medicalised', and didn't feel that I could give my best to the patients or their parents, although I did work there in a time of constant bed crises).
I then had my daughter, so now only work one half-day per week in a general outpatients department - completely different style of nursing, much more about the emotional needs of your patient.
I think if you are careful, you could word your application to suit both adult and children's nursing, but it will be tricky, because you could come accross as unsure of yourself and your reasons for doing the course, which nursing schools in general hate.
Have you considered applying just for child, and then if you don't get it, try and go through clearing for adult?
The other option, which is a bit cheeky, is to accept and start the adult course, but then approach tutors soon into course and say that you 'made a big mistake', etc, and that you should have applied for child branch. It's a risk, but I know a few students that did this at Southampton, and were allowed to change branch.