Work Experience
Committed to assisting you onto the first rung of your career ladder
Weston General Hospital is committed to the provision of work experience to local senior school pupils. As a hospital we have certain requirements for health and safety and confidentiality to consider when arranging students attachments and over the last few years we have noticed an increase in numbers wishing to find out about working in health care. We are delighted that health care is so popular and for this reason have looked at what we can provide to these young people and how we can make sure that anyone undertaking a work experience placement get the most out of their time at the hospital
There are two groups of students for whom we run structured placements for. These are year ten pupils in their work experience week and potential medical students (usually year 12)
Below are further details for each group:
Potential Medical Students
We would prefer that these students have done their GCSEs and have already demonstrated that they have a good chance of meeting the academic requirements. We will be able to offer four days of work experience combining experience on medical wards, surgical wards and X-ray. We will be able to give them a good understanding of the range of medical careers and be able to provide them with a sound background to help with their application and interview if they decide to pursue this university option.
Year 10 work experience
This will be a four days long and we will try to make sure it fits with your work experience weeks however, are there are so many different dates within the local schools calenders, we regrettably are not able to accommodate all of them . It would be really helpful to us if you could let us know your planned week as soon as possible. The week with us commences with an induction on health and safety and will then be a combination of seminars, visits, practical clinical skills sessions, talks as well as where possible some time in clinical areas. For health and safety reasons direct patient care involvement is not possible for this group but we aim to make sure that through video, DVDs and visits to departments each pupil gets a feel for the work done by a doctor, nurse, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, speech and language therapist and pharmacist.
Careers Evening
For anyone who doesn’t access one of our structured programmes but would like to find out more about the range of roles within the hospital we hold a careers event once a year. Aimed at young people of all ages (and parents) it is an opportunity to come and talk to people from various roles across the hospital, to learn about the roles they do, how they got their job and even to play with some equipment used in their jobs. The event will be a source of excellent information and is supported by plenty of reading material to take away as well as local educational establishments who provide much of the training and education which can lead to a career in healthcare.
This informal and relaxed event is aimed at providing information on both professional and non professional occupations in the NHS so there is really some thing for everyone. Watch out for a confirmed date for our next event!
Access more information
On the following pages you can read about the experiences of some of our staff and find out about the jobs that they carry out here. We are able to support a small number of work experience placements with a specific department and you should contact the relevant department direct to enquire about this. Please bear in mind that due to the nature of the work carried out it is not always possible to support these adhoc placements which is why we have channelled our efforts into providing the structured programmes laid out above, the careers evening and these pages through which we hope to offer everyone an opportunity to access the information they need. Further careers information can be found on www.nhscareers.nhs.uk