One of the key parts of an application to study nursing is showing that you have some insight into working in healthcare, and have experiences that demonstrate fundamental attributes such as teamwork, leadership, time management and communication. The best way that you can get this prior to university is through work experience or work shadowing, volunteering and part time work.
It can be difficult to find work experience, especially if you're currently in school as some places will only accept people who are 16+, but hopefully this post, where I'll run through where I went and what I did, will give you some ideas about where to start looking for those all important experiences.
Work experience-
I managed to get 3 weeks of shadowing across 3 years, starting when I was in year 11.
My first was a week in St Peter's Hospital (Chertsey) on a rotation through endoscopy, A&E, orthopaedics and theatres.
This was where I got to watch a procedure that started off as a laparoscopy and ended as an open right hemicolectomy. They let me hold the freshly removed bowel and told me not to tell anyone (oops, sorry). I also watched a medical student pass out cold during that same operation. It was quite a day.
It was my first esperience in an emergency department, and although I wasn't able to be in Resus because of my age, I did get to spend time in majors and minors, and in triage. I also got ward experience on a geriatric orthopaedic ward and outpatient experience in fracture clinics.
The next experience was at Epsom Hospital, on a formal shadowing programme arranged by my school. Here, I rotated through cardiology, endocrinology and acute general med, as well as a few clinics like endocrine (thyroid, diabetes and gestational diabetes)- a varied experience. I really appreciated moving around so much as I got to learn from so many specialities, but it did make it slightly difficult to get to grips with any one area.
The highlight of this work experience was being mistaken for a junior doctor on a ward round because I answered one of the consultant questions correctly, and it took a full 6 hours for said consultant to discover that not only did I not work in the hospital, but that I was literally 17 years old. Big ego boost.
I managed to get a week at a GP surgery in London through a friends dad. I appreciate the privilege of this situation, as not everybody knows someone in the medical field, but I would really encourage you to reach out to literally anybody in any kind of healthcare (even if it's not the field you want to go into) as this can give you a foot in the door and allows you to make new contacts when there.
In this week, I spent time in GP consultations, minor surgery clinics, doing home visits and on community visits to a local home for people with profound learning disability. I also spent time with the practice nurse, seeing things like smears, baby jab clinics and ear syringes, and the district nurses for medications and wound care. These were my first experiences of nursing and were formative in me deciding to pursue nursing over medicine.
My number one tip for work experience (and for placements as a StN) would be to carry a notebook with you everywhere, and write down anything that sounds vaguely interesting or that you're unfamiliar with. I recognise that asking questions is sometimes difficult in a clinical environment when you might be feeling underconfident and don't know the clinician you're working with that well, so writing things down allows you to go home and research them in your own time. Below are a few snippets from my book that I carried around with me the entire time...
God bless 16 year old me having to look up the definition of tachycardia
I genuinely only learnt these things last year yet apparently it was already somewhere deep in my subconscious.... (but CO2 is acid not alkali, jeez)
why did I bother writing an entire post on CXR when really all I needed to know was here already (for reference, white on x-ray doesn't necessarily mean infection)
In terms of finding hospital experience, I'd recommend looking on the hospitals websites. Usually there will be a section about volunteering and work experience, which will likely have contact details for someone you can email. Be really clear about your situation, what you're after, and potentially when you're looking to do it. You waste nothing by asking, and the worst they can say is no or that they can't currently accommodate work experience students. Some departments will be off limits (usually places like ED and ITU), so maybe pick a speciality (like cardiac or respiratory) and ask if there's any way for you to get into an inpatient or outpatient setting.
Volunteering-
I spent 4 years volunteering in 2 different roles. Again, I was in the privileged position of not needing paid employment whilst still at school so was able to prioritise volunteering over working, but this is not the case for everybody.
The first 2 years, I worked at Oxfam. Initially I started here as part of my Duke of Edinburgh bronze award, but enjoyed it so much that I stayed on past the required 6 months. Although this wasn't directly related to nursing, it helped me develop loads of transferrable skills like communication skills with a huge range of customers and was my first real experience of 'work' in the real world. Plus, it was just really fun and a nice way to spend a few hours on a Saturday.
The second 2 years I volunteered at my local hospital (Royal Surrey County) on their feeding scheme. This was a programme set up for 16-17 year olds who wanted to go into healthcare, to give an experience of being on the wards and helping with patient care. It involved going for some initial training, covering general patient care and aspects of nutritional support like swallow assessments and signs of aspiration, alongside us feeding each other yogurt for practice, and then we would be assigned a ward. You'd attend once a week and help the staff to give out meals to patients, and then provide any assistance with eating and drinking to help patients meet their nutritional needs. If no support was needed, you could just go and chat to patients and provide some company, which was really appreciated by a lot of the older patients. Usually people would do this scheme for one year, but I chose to go back the following year and do it again because I genuinely enjoyed spending time on the wards.
Paid work-
I got a job working at my old primary school, which I worked for almost a year. They ran an after school club for children who's parents couldn't pick them up on time for whatever reason. For younger children, they would stay in the library and read, draw, play board games and watch movies. For the older children, they would go up to a classroom and start on their homework. My role as a 'late stay supervisor' was to supervise the kids in whichever room they were in (it was best with the smaller kids because I was literally being paid to sit and watch 101 Dalmatians and colour in some pictures). Even though I wasn't doing paeds nursing, this was such a useful experience in terms of learning how to adjust communication techniques to suit the audience and also introduced me to concepts like safeguarding, which obviously is vitally important in a school.
Other things that could be beneficial in an application include babysitting or working/volunteering in a nursing home, or even something like running your own business online. Having any kind of experience shows that you are motivated and dedicated. If it's related to healthcare- great. If it's not- literally not a problem. You just need to think about what transferrable skills you gained, and how these could help you in nursing.
I carried on with part time work whilst at uni- partly for the $$$, and partly for the experience and to bulk out my CV.
I worked for the university as a Student Ambassador. This involved helping out at open days and applicant days. On open days, I helped to give campus tours and also giving the Adult Nursing subject talk- great for improving public speaking skills and getting over nerves about presenting in front of people!! I also worked at the interview days for nursing, where I acted as a supervisor in the group interview, meaning I was assigned 1 or 2 students to watch and make notes on how well they interacted within the group etc. I genuinely enjoyed this work- I met students on interview days who've got into Brookes, and I've then bumped into on their first placements an my heart swells for them knowing that they're finally on their nursing journey!
I also picked up bank HCA shifts through NHSP in my final year. This gives you the chance to experience lots of different clinical areas. Some of my favourites included neuro rehab (where I'd had my very first placement, so was lovely to go back as a nearly qualified nurse) and transplant. Generally you can sign up for bank shifts in your local trust once you've done 12 weeks of placement, so lots of people will get signed up in their first year. I left it later to focus on academics and placement, and worked most of my shifts in the time between finishing my final placement and getting my Pin.
I got the opportunity to do some part time work as a research intern with Brookes. This was part of a scheme that I got enrolled in at the end of my first year, which ended with my first academic publication- you can read more about that in this post...
Thank you for reading! I hope this was interesting and/or useful and will maybe be beneficial if you're after work experience or volunteering opportunities. The most important thing to remember is that it doesn't really matter what you got from it, what matters is how you apply it in any future situations.
Christie x
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