Here at Liverpool Women’s we believe we have a role to play in our community which extends beyond the delivery of great healthcare.
In our day to day contact with women and their families, we have a great opportunity to influence on really important social issues such as healthy eating, good life choices, respect for each other, building personal aspiration and promoting the great opportunities that working in healthcare provide.
We have a strong commitment to the young people in our community and work actively in partnership with our local schools, both primary and secondary, colleges and universities, to promote the work of the NHS and the Women’s in particular. We do this through work experience, school conferences, speaking at career events, competitions, visits.
Since January this year, we have had 120 work experience students working at the Women’s. Many of our departments now support Y10 and Y11 placements in clinical areas, which gives our young people a real taste of the great jobs we do and the great rewards that come with them.
We make sure all our events are interactive and fun – be it from wearing our pregnancy bellies, learning about breastfeeding with our knitted ‘boobs’, or getting the chance to sit in a birthing pool –we make sure everyone gets involved and our staff love having the young people around.
We go to great lengths to challenge some of the perceptions about NHS jobs and expose our young people to the wide range of career opportunities open to them. Our Consultant Midwife, Simon Mehigan, is always ready to speak to students about his wonderful job and challenge their thinking that nursing and midwifery is traditionally a career choice for girls.Â
We work hard to build aspiration, and many of our doctors are more than happy to come along and talk to the students about their start in life and what drove them on to become successful doctors.
We find that many young people are looking for a career where they feel they can make a difference. Through our efforts we hope to help them achieve their dream which for some could mean working for the NHS where every single person’s role matters. As they will find out, caring for people is a real team job and can be very rewarding.