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Making all NHS Careers Visible

Posted by Julie Fisher 9 months ago

Blog from Beverley Harden

Deputy Chief Allied Health Professions Officer, NHS England

So many of the careers and jobs within the NHS are invisible, what’s also invisible is that for so many a job turns into a career and the opportunity to self actualise.

I have just sat through a beautiful university graduation of science and medical related subjects - not one course led to a job, maybe a third of the room didn’t know what they were doing next, maybe a third were off to do an MSc that again led to no job but another year of fees. The other third - some with jobs, some to training into professions.

There was so much knowledge, learning, hope and passion in the room. 

Imagine if many of them had found out about so many of the incredible jobs in health and care earlier in their career choices, imagine the assurance of work, the reduced debt and purpose alongside the joy of a university education? 

The challenge is that at school they all knew what Biology etc was, so many would have tried to get places for medicine, dental, physio etc and when unsuccessful didn't know what else to do and so took a generic medical science subject to rethink. 

It is so important school leavers (and everyone making career choices) have the chance to understand, try, discuss and learn about the different professions to see where they fit, where their passion could lie and what jobs/careers they could do. The choices are bewildering if one is not helped to navigate NHS careers. 

We do our next generation a great disservice by not building this breadth of understanding.

However the REAL sadness was that even after three years of learning, a stones throw from the local hospital in a faculty of health and care programmes, the majority still did not know much more about the opportunities available to them. 

We could do so much better.....  

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This post was edited on Aug 5, 2024 by Julie Fisher