Work experience

Introduction

My name is Jo Young and I'm the Widening Participation Development Manager here at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Trust.

Why is widening participation important for Guy's and St Thomas'?

Widening participation is really important for us here at Guy's and St Thomas' for several reasons.

First, for our patients to feel comfortable and safe in our care, it's really important that they are represented within our workforce. We need to make sure our workforce covers the diversity of people that locally may come into our hospital and into our care.

The other reasons really are obviously following on from the pandemic and the situation we saw in 2020 where many people in different industries lost their jobs, we've become what's known as an anchor organisation in the community because healthcare isn't going anywhere; healthcare it's always going to be here no matter what. So, we have a responsibility as an anchor organisation to make sure we are recruiting our local population and supporting that local population, because we know that if people are in work and in good, paid work, they're therefore healthier so there’s a knock-on effect that if we make sure we employ local people and give local people good work they will be healthier and therefore not need our services quite so much. There's a sort of cyclical arrangement there, we’re supporting the community.

Finally, there's a green element. We don't want our staff travelling from far and wide, using fossil fuels, when there are people on our doorstep who are capable of working here and doing our roles. So, those are the 3 reasons why widening participation is important for us.

What are you currently doing to provide equal access to opportunities?

Currently, we have several different programmes going on in our local community. We work with all our local schools and colleges, because the first part of widening participation is making sure local people understand what the 350 different roles are within a hospital environment. It's not all about doctors and nurses—although we need them too—but there are many other professions.

We do a lot of work with schools and colleges around engagement, making sure young people understand all the opportunities available to them. But it's not just about young people; there are people in our community looking for roles, looking for work at any age and from any background. We also work with job centres around what we call our sector work-based academy, and that’s working with people aged 25+ who are looking for work. They go through a programme that makes them job-ready for working in the NHS, learning about our values and learning how to be the type of person we want working with us. After the programme, we interview them to enable them to work on  our staff bank so they can get experience and be in a better position to apply for permanent roles.

The programme we're really proud of is our supported internships for neurodiverse and autistic people. I've learnt a huge amount about neurodiversity since I’ve in this role and how the traditional style of interview and the traditional style of recruitment that most employers actually have really isn't suitable for people with neurodiverse conditions. They can’t answer questions in that way, they get stressed, they get anxious. It’s how do we build a recruitment process that actually enables anybody to have an equitable chance at a job. We’ve been doing a lot of work, again with out local colleges We're working with local colleges and some local charities to provide internships for people with autism, so they get experience. We're also working with our recruitment team and managers to ensure understanding around reasonable adjustments and how we can support people to get jobs in the first place.

Supported internship programme

My name is Carol Dixon and I am the lead for and work on a programme called Pathway into Employment, which is a supported internship programme for young people aged 18 to 25. It's specifically designed for young people who are neurodivergent, and when I use the term neurodivergent, what I mean there is that it’s for young people who have a hidden or cognitive impairment, and that normally translates itself by having a deficit in communication skills and sometimes heightened levels of anxiety or fear, amongst other things. But the programme in itself is designed to enable those particularly young people to progress into paid employment.

How does the scheme work?

What we as a programme do is we work in partnership with organisations like Guy's and St Thomas', who provide placements for the duration of an academic year for the interns. What that enables the interns to do is not just gain employability skills, but it also enables them to develop the kind of social and cultural norms and grow within that.

What is special about the supported internship programme?

What’s special in my opinion about the programme is that we act as a conduit between the neurodivergent young person and the workplace. It's about giving them, empowering them to take ownership of who they are and enjoy their uniqueness, but also gives them the abilities and the skills to understand, as said before, the kind of social norms within that. On the flip side of that, it's about the mentors and managers and getting them to understand how to liaise, work, and reflect about the whole kind of concept what neurodiversity means, how it impacts the workplace and the systems that are involved and it gets them to kind of challenge those kind of questions “how do we change in order to facilitate that process, that individual?”.

We come with support, so myself and my team support the young person and the team. A little bit like I guess you would if you can imagine learning to ride a bike and having those trainer wheels, well we come very much as those trainer wheels and really just to give support to the intern and the team themselves so that there becomes this kind of happy marriage and both start to grow and work together in confidence.

What feedback have you got from students who completed their placements here?

Out of the 5 interns I had in the Trust last year, 2 of those successfully were able to gain employment to the departments they were assigned to. For the 3 who haven't, that will be a continual plug but what is definite is that the Trust share the same commitment as I do with regards to wanting the organisation to be inclusive and equitable. It is just a process and an engagement, and willing to take that risk, if you can call it a risk.

Manager and intern experiences

My name is Jerry Pringle. I’m the service manager for pain management input here at Guy’s and St Thomas’. I’ve been hosting Daniel O’Dima with us for almost a year now. We were told there was an opportunity to work with Carol and her team, having a neurodivergent student from Suffolk College. I think the more varied voices we have in healthcare, the better, so it seemed like a really good opportunity.

Hi, my name is Daniel O’Dima. I work at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital.

[Jerry] One of the great things the team did was have the students fill out a CV about themselves, so before Daniel came in, I knew a topic he enjoyed, like Chelsea football, foods he liked, things he didn’t like. It’s really nice because actually I felt like I got to know Daniel before I met him.

[Daniel] I work as a validator, meaning that I handle purchasing, medical records, book appointments, make referrals, and assist patients.

[Jerry] We had a programme for him and we thought, “Okay, this is hopefully where we can get Daniel by the end of the programme,” but very quickly realised Daniel was far more capable than even our wildest dreams. The challenge with Daniel is to teach him quick enough for him because he just loves a new challenge, loves getting more information. His appetite to grow and learn was really impressive and something I’ve enjoyed a lot.

[Daniel] I learnt about how to secure medical data seriously and to be careful with it.

[Jerry] Just how much everyone cares about seeing Daniel do well as a department has been a massive point of pride for me and something I’ve really enjoyed. I think it’s been some really nice memorable moments and I think to see someone blossom and grow is part of the reason why you do a management job.

The model of recruitment we use is old and outdated and means we’ve missed opportunities with people like Daniel. Daniel and other neurodivergent students might not thrive in a typical interview, and that’s a shame because actually Daniel is a well-valued, integral part of our team - someone who we can’t imagine not having. It shows that the NHS and organisations in general need to think of how we provide everyone with opportunities.

The future for Daniel right now is going to be starting the apprenticeship programme with us at Guy’s and St Thomas’ in September. In the meantime, he’s doing bank work until then. Although I think he told me once that he wanted to work in the stock market, the next natural path for him would be a pathway coordinator. He has brilliant attention to detail, doesn’t make mistakes, and understands processes really well, so it lends itself to him to do that successfully. The future for Daniel is what Daniel wants the future to be for him.

How can we rethink the recruitment process to better engage and support neurodiverse talent?

[Jo] We're developing a process for managers to follow that covers all sorts of diversity. We have something called diverse panels, whereby we have to have somebody from a Black or ethnic minority background on every interview panel to support those challenges but also it’s around processes that talk about reasonable adjustment and making sure individuals who have disabilities or additional needs feel comfortable to speak up prior to an interview and ask for what it is that they need to enable them to give their best and demonstrate their skills. Managers need to understand and take that on board. It's not about giving people priority or a leg up; it's about being equitable and ensuring people are starting from the same level.

One of the best ways we've found to educate managers is for them to take a supported intern, because they learn so much. The individual benefits because they get the work experience and the opportunity to demonstrate their skills, but the team also learn from that individual how you make reasonable adjustments, how you treat people as an individual person with individual needs and how we go about supporting them to give their best. There are stereotypes about neurodiversity, but many neurodiverse people are detail-driven, accurate, punctual—all of these things we value. It's about recognising that there may be parts of the job they need support with, but actually there are parts of the job where they will absolutely flourish. It's really about educating managers on how we best do that.

What are the challenges and what success have you had so far?

We've had absolute success. Some of the supported interns we've had with our partners at Southwark College and Care Trade have found work within our organisation, and we are really proud of that. These individuals who have faced interview after interview with no success because the interviews do not support their conditions. By coming through the supported internship programme, being able to demonstrate their skills to managers, the managers have been jumping over themselves to change their recruitment practices to enable these people to find work/. We’ve had some amazing success.

For me, it’s the comments from managers who have said things like, “This experience has really opened my eyes; it’s changed the way I think about interviewing,” that are the real successes. The individuals getting jobs is great, but actually for managers to have those lightbulb moments and realise they can do things differently—that’s what makes change and how we perpetuate the change within our organisation.

We've also had successes with our sector work-based academy, where we worked with local colleges and local employment agencies with job seekers. People have come through that programme, worked on our staff bank, and they have been offered permanent roles, and are now working with us as fully-fledged members of the team. It shows that people from any walk of life, any background can find a job within the NHS and within Guy’s and St Thomas’.

There have absolutely been challenges, and there continue to be challenges, but we will continue to try and break down those challenges. We're a big organisation—about 25,000 staff at the last count—that’s a huge number of people to educate. We're breaking through with individual managers one at a time, but organisationally change is slow. I like to think that we’re getting there. The other challenges are things like, as the NHS our recruitment processes are national. It’s not necessarily within our gift to change the entire organisational recruitment process, we’re trying to influence and make change nationally, to demonstrate what we've done here and demonstrate the benefits, demonstrate what value these people have brought to Guy’s and St Thomas’, and therefore to show nationally how, if we change things, we can actually make it better for a lot more people.

Apply for vacancies.

Students attending school, college or university in the 4 boroughs

If you go to school, college or university in one of the 4 boroughs:

• your school must contact us first to confirm their support for your application
• we cannot accept direct requests from students or parents without contact from the school or college first
• please complete the work experience application form once your school has confirmed their support

We aim to offer a maximum of 2 placements per school each year, subject to availability.

Students living in one of the 4 boroughs

If you live in one of the 4 boroughs but go to school, college or university outside these areas you may still be eligible for a placement.

Please contact us directly to discuss your circumstances before applying.

All placements are subject to availability and may be prioritised for students attending schools within the 4 boroughs.

If you would like to apply for an allied health professional placement, please email [email protected]

We will send you an application form and let you know what placements are available.

Apprenticeships let you earn a nationally recognised qualification while learning on the job.

Apprentices bring new ideas, fresh thinking, and strong digital skills to teams.

Opportunities are available for our existing staff to upskill through apprenticeships.

If you are aged 16 or over you can apply for an apprenticeship.

Our programmes support enthusiastic and talented people, help promote diversity, and make a positive impact across the Trust.

For apprenticeships at Guy’s and St Thomas’, please email [email protected]

For apprenticeships in Essentia, please email [email protected]

King's College London (KCL) runs an elective programme offering a 4-week clinical placement. This is for medical students who are in their penultimate or final year of clinical study.

For more information, please visit elective placement in clinical medicine (KCL).

If you have any requests or queries about elective placements, please email [email protected]

If you would like to do a nursing or midwifery placement, please apply by emailing [email protected]

We'll send you an application form and let you know what placements are available.

Placements can only be approved if all paperwork is filled in correctly and sent on time. We may not be able to approve your placement if there are no places available.

International nursing and midwifery students cannot apply for a nursing and midwifery elective placement. We are developing a process to support international students in the future.

The widening participation team cannot arrange observership placements.

You will need to get approval from a clinician to support your placement. They will organise an honorary contract for you.

Please email [email protected] for an honorary contract.

There is an admin fee of £250.

The fees are paid in advance and are non-refundable.
You will need to pay the fees if you're:

• from overseas
• from a private practice
• a non-NHS non-working doctor

If you are already working in the NHS you do not have to pay the fee.

If an NHS to NHS form is needed, the medical honorary advisor will send this to you. You will need to send this to your employer's HR department for them to complete and return to us.