Mrs Allen (Careers Administrator)
With in-person work experience opportunities seriously curtailed due to the pandemic, courses that require a set number of work experience hours, such as Medicine, Dentistry and Allied Health Professions, adjusted their entry requirements to include online work experience programmes.
Despite the pressures it faced, Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust ran an online academy programme. The academy had been planned as an onsite event, but they rapidly converted it to an online programme and delivered it to students through video and interactive content. Students at Bedford Girls’ School were invited to join the Heath & Care Academy, to help them meet their course entry requirements and to replace some of their missed work experience opportunities.
Requiring a commitment of six-months, the students had a half-day of content per month to work through. The videos posted featured a diverse range of hospital areas in each video, from an interview with the Chief Executive, a day with Emergency Nurse Practitioners in A&E assessing, diagnosing and treating trauma patients including x-ray and plaster cast application, to the Tissue Viability Team talking about wound dressings and how their service operates. An insight in to the many departments and roles were included during the programme including Neonatal, Paediatrics, ICU, and specialist areas such as the Moorefield Eye Hospital.
After the release of each video, students could arrange live Q&A sessions with the department and staff involved. Staff also provided details of their career journey, their job description and what a typical day entailed. All of this year’s participants have been awarded certificates to confirm they completed the online programme and can now include their experiences in their UCAS applications.
Congratulations to Bavani Dhinakharan, Isabel Jones, Meranie Kairu, Maddie Lever, Rachel Gibb and Saara Bhatti.
Miss Dawson (Biology Teacher) supported the students during their six-month programme, she said: “The NHS academy course is only offered by four hospital trusts in the UK, so our students were very lucky to have the opportunity to take part this year. While the six students who completed the course, this year are all aspiring doctors, who gained experience of the role of a multidisciplinary team in patient care, the course is also aimed at students who have an interest in a medical related career, but want to gain practical experience and knowledge of some of the 350+ careers in the NHS before selecting a pathway for themselves. Information about signing up to the next course will be sent out soon, and we hope to see more students taking advantage of this opportunity next year.”
