Three senior members of the team from Nuffield Health Newcastle Hospital have been helping to inspire the next generation of healthcare professionals at a local primary school.
Stacey Brunton, sales and services manager at Nuffield Health Newcastle Hospital, Dr Riaan Swanepoel, general practitioner and Andrew Swinburne, clinical integrated services manager and qualified physiotherapist attended the ‘career speed dating’ event at Carville Primary School in Wallsend on Tuesday 9 July.
The event, which was organised by the North Tyneside Learning Trust as part of its ‘World of Work (WOW)’ project, was also attended by other leading North East employers such as Sage, Northumbria Police, Barclays Bank and Nexus.
The two-hour long event gave the school’s year 4 and year 6 pupils, aged 8-11, the opportunity to interview each employer or ‘work ambassador’ to find out as much as they could about their job role and the different career opportunities available within their organisation. The students then rotated around the room at the end of each interview until they had visited all of the ambassadors.
“When people think about careers in healthcare, the automatic assumption is that you have to attend medical school to train to become a doctor or a nurse, but there are actually a wide range of career opportunities available within an organisation like Nuffield Health,” said Stacey Brunton, sales and services manager at Nuffield Health Newcastle Hospital.
“Nuffield Health runs a network of hospitals, medical clinics, fitness and wellbeing clubs and diagnostic units across the UK, creating fantastic jobs across the board from consultants to marketing experts, finance directors to reception personnel.
“Our people are integral to our success as a hospital group which is why we wanted to give something back to help inspire future generations and make them aware that there are a range of great jobs available on their own doorsteps once they’ve finished school.
“We thoroughly enjoyed the career speed dating event at Carville Primary School, the children were so inquisitive and asked some brilliant questions. We will definitely look to attend more events like this in future.”
Julie Scott, World of Work Project Lead at North Tyneside Learning Trust, commented:
“We were delighted to welcome Nuffield Health along to their first ever World of Work career speed dating event.
“The WOW Project is designed to provide pupils at our partner schools with access to high quality, meaningful careers guidance and information.
“By engaging with local, national and international businesses to attend our events, we can effectively bring the world of work to life for the children and young people we support to help them make informed decisions about their futures.
“The speed dating sessions that we offer to schools are a fantastic way of getting children to engage with business people from an early age, to spark their curiosity as well as provide them with experience of talking to people they don’t know in a professional environment.”
Nuffield Health is an award winning, not-for-profit private healthcare group. With 31 hospitals located across the country, including Newcastle and the CQC rated ‘outstanding’ hospital in Stockton-on-Tees, Nuffield Health has just recently been named the ‘Private Hospital Group of the Year’ for the third year running at the annual Health Investor Awards.
