Exploring NHS careers at Southmead Hospital with Blaise High School
Year 7 students from Blaise High School recently had the opportunity to explore the huge variety of careers within the North Bristol NHS Trust on a visit to Southmead Hospital. From robot maintenance to chefs in the staff kitchen, this visit helped to broaden their horizons when it comes to what a career within the NHS could look like. 
The day started with a tour of the Brunel building on the Southmead Hospital site with the Learning and Development team from the NHS. The students learnt that the hospital was structured like an airport with check in gates to help staff manage the patients. In the atrium students saw staff in a variety of coloured uniforms and learnt about their different roles within the hospital including porters, surgeons, nurses and doctors.
A trip up to the staff café was next on the agenda – of course the staff need a space to eat too! Going behind the scenes highlighted a huge variety of roles from chefs to catering assistants and catering managers to cleaners. The students learnt about catering staff shifts patterns and how the food is prepared at the hospital.
Exploring facilities and maintenance was a highlight of the tour as we bumped into the hospital robots! Students learnt that these robots were helping to deliver items around the hospital including meals for patients, bed sheets and post. The robots not only help staff to complete their jobs but they also create jobs as well. We met a staff member working in maintenance who helps keep the robots up and running – and to some of the student’s delight, this occasionally involves using a PlayStation controller!
In the post room students saw staff sorting the mail ready to be distributed internally or posted out of the hospital. They learnt the importance of technology in this role too. The post room has a franking machine for all the stamps due to the volume of post the hospital needs to send out. 
In the final session of the day, students got hands on learning about the spread of infection within a hospital. Students tested their hand washing skills using a special gel that highlighted any areas they hadn’t washed under a UV light. They learnt that hand washing is very important for keeping patients and staff safe whilst working in a hospital. It’s sometimes thought that careers within the NHS are limited to just doctors and nurses but during this visit students got the chance to explore first hand the vast range of jobs within the NHS, opening their eyes to a range of different career opportunities. The schoolteacher commented that one of the most useful parts of the day was ‘seeing the range of jobs in a hospital, many that would be appropriate for our students’.
We’d like to extend a huge thank you to the NHS staff for their time and energy in supporting this visit and to the students and staff from Blaise High School for their brilliant engagement during the visit.
