On 28^th March Ms Whitehead and 9 students from Years 10 and 12 attended a Health and Social Care Day hosted at Maidstone Hospital. We had the opportunity to hear from senior staff about the huge range of careers available in the NHS (including gardeners, electricians, porters radiographers and surgeons). We learnt about different routes into the NHS including apprenticeships, traineeships and post-graduate entries.

We had the opportunity to visit a number of specialist stands and speak to staff about their particular roles and the challenges and pleasures of their jobs. As one of our students commented “The people at the different stands were all very informative and clearly loved what they were doing”. We also saw inside an ambulance, experienced a simulation tent which is used to train paramedics who are called to a wide range of scenarios, a dummy patient on which people can train to deal with emergencies. The students also had the opportunity to practise with “key hole surgery” which is really challenging because the image on the screen is the mirror image of how you are manipulating the equipment.

The students asked lots of questions at the stands, collected booklets on the various opportunities available and in some cases changed their mind about the career they want to pursue. They were fantastic ambassadors for the school and it was a great day.