Royal College of Nursing cadets complete work experience

A group of year 13 students recently completed their Royal College of Nursing (RCN) placements at SWB.

The school children were sixth form students aged 17 to 18 from Holly Lodge High School in Smethwick, all taking part in the RCN Prince of Wales Nursing Cadet Scheme.

The aim of the scheme is to contribute to the development and preparation of young people whatever their background, to engage, enable and empower young people to make a valuable contribution to society and their local communities, as well as to be proactive about the health and wellbeing of themselves and others.

The young people’s placements took place over four days, accumulating a total of 20 hours at the Trust.

“The cadets undertook an observational clinical placement as part of their RCN cadet scheme programme, said Zoe Taylor, Project Facilitator from the Nurse Education Team.

“The placements were carefully tailored towards their fields of interest, with cadets benefiting from experiences within areas from midwifery and nursing to IT and medical engineering with the purpose of offering a wide range of real-life experience of professional roles within a healthcare service setting.”

Whilst at SWB, the RCN cadets had the opportunity to gain invaluable expertise and knowledge. This included learning about how different clinical and non-clinical colleagues work together to achieve the same goals and meet the Trust values. This, in turn, aided cadets in contextualising their scheme modules, reflecting on their own emerging practices, and supported their career plans and higher education decision making.

Zoe added: “As the potential next generation and future of healthcare, the young people who visited us will have got a taste of what is it like to work in the NHS and hopefully it will have inspired them to look at it as a realistic career for their futures.

“I would also like to say a huge thank you to all ward managers and the practice development nurses at SWB as without their

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co-operation and support these bespoke placements would not have been possible.”

We received an array of positive feedback from the RCN cadets – here is just a handful:

Student A: “I got to learn about wide range of things. It also made me realise that no two days are the same. All the patients on the ward had different needs and it was amazing to see how the doctors, nurses, and the healthcare assistants were working together to make sure that they were comfortable and had everything that they need. The staff are amazing, they were so friendly and made me feel welcomed.”

Student B: “I learned a lot, such as how to check a temperature and how to give an inhaler. I really enjoyed it.”