What Do You Actually Do? Episode 58: Vinusha Haran, Placement Year experience in the NHS

/ Stephen Furlong

Listen to this and all the previous episodes.

Vinusha’s bio:

I am currently a History undergraduate student who is completing a placement year at the NHS Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group. Although my degree and the NHS may not appear to have a direct link, I have an interest to work in the public sector, in particular social services. I also have a passion for Arts and Humanities which is why I have a chosen to complete a History degree.

Useful links:

Related podcast episodes:

Transcript:

Kate 

You’re listening to the what do you actually do? podcast. Each week we want to bring you an inspiring interview, a useful tip, or encouraging message to help you find your place in the professional world. 

Hello and welcome to this episode of what do you actually do? My name is Kate Morris and I’ll be your host today. In today’s episode we’ll be talking about doing a placement year within the NHS. Today we’re joined by Vinusha Haran, who’s doing a placement as a quality and safeguarding support officer within an NHS clinical commissioning group. So Vinusha, that’s a long title. What do you actually do? 

Vinusha 

Yeah, it does some it does sound a little bit complicated. So basically just to give a little context about what a clinical commissioning group is because before the placement I didn’t have any idea actually what it does. So the clinical commissioning group designs and purchases health care services for a local population, and in this case it’s for Cheshire and within this organisation there’s something called a quality and safeguarding directorate. And then within the directorate there’s different teams that deal with different aspects of health care services, such as the hospitals, GPs, care homes and my job is to provide business support to all these different teams, so that can include kind of help helping with projects, helping like setting up spreadsheets for example, or kind of organising meetings and helping out with the quality impact assessment QIAs that come through, set up agendas and stuff like that. So my main thing is to provide business support for the teams. 

Kate 

So you’re getting a really good insight across a load of aspects of the NHS then, it sounds like? 

Vinusha 

Oh yes, 100%. I’ve learned so much about NHS as a national organisation and kind of the hierarchy of how like where NHS England it sits where health and social care sits. And really understand the different the difference between a hospital and other kind of NHS trusts and mental health services.  And I’m really grateful that I’ve had this opportunity to kind of understand the different healthcare because as someone who didn’t know much about it now I know kind of the behind the scenes of what’s going on and how much work that goes on just to provide one package of care, for example. 

Kate 

So if you sort of, I mean weren’t familiar with what it was, which yeah, I mean you’ve just given a really good explanation there. I wasn’t sure it was either ’cause it is, it is kind of ambiguous really, isn’t it? Such a broad title, but if you weren’t entirely sure what it was about, what attracted you to the placement in the first place? Why did you feel like, oh actually I think I would like to give that go. 

Vinusha 

Well, I kind of just landed on the job role because the University of York has a placement padlet where they advertise different placements that companies come to you guys with. And I think the CCG came to you guys and asked to promote the placement and I had a look on the padlet on a random day and it did look quite intimidating, cause you think NHS, that’s a, you know, very national organisation, very high standards of the kind of people that work there. And I have an interest in safeguarding because I previously did an e-mentoring role with the University of York and that’s working with like year 12. And as part of that you do safeguarding training because obviously you’re working with minors. So I wanted to learn more about quality and safeguarding and also just to have a little sneak peek about the NHS. cause at this time was like the pandemic. And I knew and as much as everyone else knows, that there’s there’s a lot of behind the scenes work in the NHS, and not only in a clinical sense but also non clinical. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to kind of get that understanding of what’s going on and I was lucky enough to get the role. 

Kate 

So you mentioned you sort of noticed it on the padlet. What was the process for actually getting the placement then? Did you have to fill out an application? Do you have to do an interview? How did that work? 

Vinusha 

Well, it started off with some sending my CV and cover letter for the job role, and then after that it’s shortlisted to a certain number of candidates. And I was fortunate enough to get to that shortlisting stage. And from there you’re invited to an assessment centre day. So that happened in like March 2021 and in the day we did a group task where we got some like uh kind of issue and we got heart attacks. And they gave us some kind of clinical data about heart attacks in Cheshire and like we had to do a quick presentation about it. And then after that we did there was like the actual interviews which was about half an hour long. And while we’re waiting to do our interview, we also had psychometric tests which had like an an e-mail exercise. It had like a little thing about Care Quality Commission. So like a little task that you had to like organise some information for and all these three elements of like the group task, the interview and the psychometric testing helps give you an overall score and like the highest person gets selected for the role. 

Kate 

How did you prepare for that then cause it sounds like a pretty intense actual day? 

Vinusha 

Yeah, I was really intense. Especially with the group presentation, because my clinical knowledge is unfortunately very limited to year 11 biology GCSE and chemistry, so it was quite intense. But we were with different students with different degrees, so I had a lot of STEM people in my group and obviously as a history student I could bring out kind of like collating the information and presenting it well, and the other students could understand and interpret the data better than I could. So we all had different skills that we could work together with and in terms of preparing for the day, I didn’t know exactly what kind of psychometric test I’ll get, so I did, so I went on one like the practise websites where you can practise different types of psychometric testing. Whether it’s like numerical reasoning, logical reasoning, verbal reasoning, you can select different types of tests. And you can like go through different questions. None of it really kind of was relevant because it was very specific the tests that we got. But things like writing an e-mail, that’s pretty simple, the last task about like the care quality part, that was very scary because there was like 2 national pieces of documents from Nice guidance and you kind of have to like again using my history skills, go in and be very selective what information you get. I need to get very specific information I need to present that in like a format that’s easy to understand. This was also timed ’cause we had 2 1/2 hours to complete it all these tasks and I think it’s like 30 minutes for the specific task. So it’s very much being quick and thinking on your feet. 

Kate 

So did you find it helpful to have done those practises even though the content was different? Was it helpful to have practised doing stuff under timed conditions and things like that? 

Vinusha 

Yeah, and I think, those tests are used by kind of graduate organisations as well and those kind of different competencies and different things, especially like new numerical and logical reasoning I know are quite popular, so it although it might not be relevant for the CCG’s role, it’s going to help me prepare for the future and I feel a bit more confident doing those psychometric testing cause it can be quite overwhelming and a bit scary. 

Kate 

You mentioned there how your history skills had helped you to sort of succeed in those tasks there, and that you brought a different skill set to the table compared to some of the STEM students. Are you using any sort of particular skills or subject knowledge from your history degree in your actual placement? 

Vinusha 

Yeah, I’ve actually had an interest in the NHS because in GCSE we actually did the history of health care, well, health and public health and throughout since kind of like the Greeks and ancient history all the way to modern. So we learned about the formation of the NHS back in 1948 and how those values have continued till today. So I had that historical background knowledge of the NHS, but then I can learn about the clinical aspects here and the kind of transferable skills that I had from my degree was things like research, obviously the history degree student, there’s a lot of research in terms of like looking at different historians, different arguments that’s really helped and me being proactive in doing the research. So for example, if I don’t know something, I will like look into it and try to understand that myself. And that kind of independent learning I think is quite important in the placement because you might not always have the support that you need so having that kind of proactive nature to try and find things by yourself and trying to learn things. And obviously our IT skills cause we do kind of presentations for like seminars and stuff, so that was very useful. Another aspect is kind of communication that I got from like speaking in seminars, kind of formulating arguments and that kind of communication skills is important as well for presentations and just generally talking with colleagues. Another thing is organisation, so as someone with very low contact hours compared to other degrees you have to do a lot of organising your own timetable, making sure you do all your reading, making sure that you’ve had enough time to speak to your lecturers or professors about different things if you don’t understand so those skills are very useful in terms of putting it here in the in the placement or transferring it to the placement. 

Kate 

That’s really interesting how you’ve sort of been able to apply those skills now in it in a really different context. I’m just wondering what new strengths or skills that you feel you’re discovering or developing as a result of doing the placement. 

Vinusha 

Yeah, I think the biggest thing that surprised me was how I was able to adapt to a new situation because I did feel like I was dropped into the deep ocean because obviously the NHS is a very big organisation and especially for a clinical commissioning group for a large place like Cheshire, there’s a lot going on, especially for quality and safeguarding. So just being able to adapt from like looking at historians then now looking at Nice guidance and other things published by the government in terms of like infection prevention control guidance, adapting kind of my nature to clinical language as well, which is quite difficult cause I’ve had to have a lot of meetings with my line manager trying to understand clinical language because most people in my team are nurses, so they have that clinical background and understanding of different things and there’s me thinking what is tissue viability? What does this mean? What are, what are these acronyms mean? So it’s being able to adapt to that situation. And another thing I’ve kind of learned is diary management, not only for myself, but for other people. I’m more conscious about my colleagues and because of they’re more busier than I am and trying to fit meetings around their schedule and trying to make sure that I’m not like scheduling meetings in the wrong time, that kind of thing, which is very important. And I think also a bit of a leadership thing, which I haven’t really done in my degree as of yet, except in kind of group projects, but kind of chairing this thing called the quality green team, because we have a green plan that we have to enact and in terms of the climate change, so, kind of leading on meetings and leading on that was very helpful for me. 

Kate 

It sounds like a really kind of, it’s been a combination of something that really plays your strengths but it’s been a good challenge as well to sort of, particularly adapting and learning the etiquette I guess, of working with a very large team and with all these people with very different agendas and very different jobs roles. What would you say is the biggest challenge that you’ve encountered in the placement, what’s the one thing where you felt like this was hard and I hope hopefully you’ve overcome it, but like the thing that sort of was really tough for you, is there anything that stands out? 

Vinusha 

I think there are two main things. One, as I mentioned before, is kind of the clinical language. Especially in in my directorate where we are dealing with like issues or incidents and stuff like that. And for me it was very hard to kind of grasp meetings where information was passed very quickly now that I’m the note taker, we took a long time to kind of understand the language and understand the context. But that’s kind of like practise makes perfect for that. And then the second thing is communicating with colleagues. Because people are so busy they might not see your e-mail or they may not be able to get your teams call, so just trying to contact them and try to understand what system works with different people. 

Kate 

It must have felt for both of those things, I imagine it could have felt pretty intimidating to come into environment where you are struggling to always understand what people are talking about and also if you’re trying to reach out with people and they’re not responding, it’s kind of, well, is it me? Am I am I doing the wrong thing or not important? I I can imagine how that could impact and make you feel like, we’re talking a lot at the moment about impostor syndrome, but that feeling of like being, oh, am I in over my head here, you know, did you experience anything like that? 

Speaker 2 

Definitely the impostor syndrome. Like I think a week or two before I got really, really nervous cause I think the weight of the placement was like, oh, I’m going to be doing this for a year, I’m going to be in this, I’m going to be in a work environment for full time work compared to like university work where you can just kind of pick and choose when you work. Especially for me when I didn’t have. A lot of contact hours so it’s very intimidating Especially for a directorate where there’s a lot of you have to follow the guidance you have to do this right, you have to do that right because you do have patients’ lives on your hands. Well, not me directly, but uh, my other colleagues, so it was important to me not to mess up and there’s also this understanding that you’re going to the NHS and you can’t let the NHS down because of how much they’ve done for us, especially during the pandemic and to all our lives. So that pressure was there in the beginning, but I think the first day I was definitely overwhelmed cause it’s obviously all like the induction process, but I think I settled in quicker than I thought I would and that’s because of the support that I’ve had with my line manager and my team who were really, really supportive and talked to me and made sure I was OK. And I think another thing that kind of makes imposter syndrome worse is working remotely because as we’re following government guidelines, we couldn’t go into the office for the first couple of months my placement. So a lot of it was remote and that can be quite isolating at times cause you you feel you kind of feel bad to go and reach out to another quality cause in case you’re disturbing them in a meeting or doing something. But luckily there’s other students, other students in this in the CCG. So there’s like a comms student, there’s like a finance student. So there’s a different there’s quite a few of us and we’ve kind of had like this weekly student meeting where we can talk to each other about our problems and kind of help each other out and just have a friendly face. 

Kate 

You know you’re coming to the end of your placement now, so I think that’s such a fantastic achievement to have fought through those feelings and found a way to adjust and adapt and step up. Is there anything particular that you’ve taken away from this that you feel, I’m really proud of that, now looking back? 

Vinusha 

I’m actually really proud that we as the student cohort have recruited for the next students who will be replacing us. We’ve had pastoral support and line manager support, which was very helpful, but we did quite a lot of the organising of like the assessment centre day and putting all the adverts up to unis and even now doing the on boarding process and writing the induction booklet. So that’s quite a lot. That was quite a big project that helped support with the other students. And I’m really glad that I was able to go to each different team within my directorate and learn a little bit about what they do. And every time I complete something, I’m just very happy, just do a little mini dance because I just feel like I’ve accomplished something and, you know, helped these very, very, very busy people. And I think another thing that I’ve really enjoyed is with the safeguarding team, especially there’s like safeguarding campaigns. So in November there was the adult safeguarding weeks. I’ve helped organise some of like the comms that went out and in about a weeks’ time there’s going to be a pride of Romany event for the for the Gypsy Roma Traveller community and we’ll be actually setting up a stall and talking about different stuff about healthcare and like adult safeguarding and child safeguarding, so that’ll be quite interesting and like creating some of the resources and posters for that. So that makes me feel really happy and able to engage with the community and kind of promote different types of health care services. 

Kate 

That’s amazing. So it sounds like as well as supporting others to do their roles as effectively as possible, you’ve been able to actually have a tangible impact on things as well and through your own work, which yeah, I I imagine that is a really, really nice. How do you feel like this experience is impacted on your career plans or your general employability? 

Vinusha 

It’s actually had a massive impact because before the placement, I kind of knew I wanted to be in the social sector, but I was kind of like, well, I’ll see when I graduate, kind of situation because with a history degree, there’s so much that you can do. The main thing that I focus on with my degrees is transferable skills so I can apply to different sectors, whether it’s going into banking, the social sector, government roles and even healthcare like this, the transferable skills are so vital. But I wasn’t quite sure exactly what I wanted to do. But through doing quality and safeguarding I realised I want to go into like the social work element, whether or not I end up as a social worker. But I do want to go into like the children safeguarding sector I guess and this has really helped me understand the different roles within children safeguarding cause tjere’s a lot. There’s a lot to do. There’s a lot. There’s always going to be demand for it because some children need protecting. So I’ve learned a lot in terms of as I said, the different roles that I could do, but it made me more, it’s kind of defined a more of a clear career path for me for graduation in terms of like some of the post graduate schemes I can do for social work which is really helpful like for example Frontline and the government do a step up to social work scheme as well. 

Kate 

Brilliant. So it’s really helped sort of hone those ideas further. picking up on that thread, as a history student, do you have any other sort of specific advice for other arts and humanities students who are wanting to get work experience, but aren’t sure of what roles or sectors their degree might relate to because often people hold back from trying to organise work experience cause they get caught in this cycle like well, I don’t know what to do to get experience in, so I can’t get experience. 

Vinusha 

Yeah, I’ve had that same issue. And I think the main thing that I would say is to have an open mind like, so during the placement year search, I just went through everything like there were some things that I knew that I wouldn’t do, for example finance or IT or STEM. That side I wasn’t interested in, I didn’t have the qualifications for, but I kept a very open mind for other things. So like for example in the padlet I was just looking through and the NHS just kind of jumped out to me and I didn’t realise that I really wanted to do work. I didn’t actively sought out to do work experience in NHS. It just kind of. It’s just something that I saw, so it’s keeping that open mind and looking at different opportunities and looking at different transferable skills that you have, and kind of doing a search based on that rather than specific jobs cause as we know for arts and humanities students who want to go into what the heritage sector can be quite competitive for a placement year. So I would definitely recommend keeping an open mind and just looking at what you want to do and kind of like filter out what you don’t want to do and that might make it easier. 

Kate 

I love that point around starting with the skills rather than the employer or the role kind of thing, thinking about what you actually like doing rather than necessarily where are you eligible to apply for cause I think people sort of underestimate they think it’s just a buzzword to say transferable skills, but actually employers really do. It’s true, they really do recognise those skills from your degree. And they really can be used in different contexts to really good effect. But that’s I think that’s really helpful and helpful to understand the value you’ve got from this experience even though it’s not a kind of direct, direct link to what you’ve been studying and that you could actually hold your own against students who maybe have been studying healthcare or science related degrees. You still actually succeeded above them to get the role. So yeah, it just really shows it is about that skills in that attitude, rather than necessarily your subject that you’re studying. 

Vinusha 

Yeah, I definitely agree, cause I’d kind of did the process of elimination when it came to my placement search cause I as you said. I wasn’t sure. So I just kind of ticked out things that I didn’t want to do and I looked at my skills and that OK, I can do organisation, I can do project management, but I can’t do this or I can’t do that. And then it just helped me find things that I was interested in cause I was looking at things in the third sector as well with charities. So I had quite a wide kind of range of things as like sectors and jobs I was looking at. 

Kate 

Brilliant. Well, for more info about the careers and the placement year itself, I’m going to add some relevant links to the show notes and a link to the full transcript of today’s show. But Venusha, thank you so much for taking the time to do this today. I really appreciate it. I think it’s going to be really helpful for students who are thinking about either doing a full placement year or just a shorter sort of internship or work shadowing, just getting some more work experience. I think it will be helpful and reassuring to listen to your story, so thank you so much for doing this. 

Vinusha 

Thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited to be on a podcast. My first time.