Leaping in to the NHS My Graduate Training Scheme Story by Stephen Lowis Stephen started on our Finance Stream nhsgraduates.co.uk/the-scheme/specialisms/financial-management.aspx in 2012. Below he talks about about his journey on the Scheme - useful reading if you are thinking of applying. Upon receiving my offer from the NHS Graduate Scheme I was inundated with information; with contacts, with start dates and with education dates. Everything was planned out and everything began to feel real. I have family who work in the NHS, my brother-in-law and sister are both doctors, my mam works for an Out of Hours service where I would often find myself waiting before going to school in the mornings - Ive been around it since before I can remember but I had absolutely no idea how much the NHS actually does. It really is simply quite incredible. One of the toughest parts of this, of dealing with so much information and adapting to working life – balancing your social commitments, your academic commitments and your work commitments is deciding what to read and what to listen to that isnt biased. The NHS is constantly in the press, on the political agenda and in people’s lives. Issues like Mid-Staffordshire and the release of the Francis reports, like the Winterbourne inquiries, they’re difficult to digest. The NHS has faced some scandals from unacceptable behaviour but the tenacity to learn and bounce back is something everyone within the system can be proud of. The best part of being on the scheme is that you gain huge exposure to so many different things, so many different areas and you can learn so much. This is my first job and on the whole Ive done pretty well, but there are times where Ive underperformed, Ive been placed into situations where Ive been out of my depth and had to make the best of it. At 23 I think that’s okay, but every time Ive been struggling Ive learnt from it and that’s what the scheme teaches you to do. It teaches you to use the support networks they build in, to reflect on yourself and to use other current and former trainees. Ive met some fantastic leaders and managers during my time on the scheme. I know I could contact them tomorrow or in 5 years and they’ll make the time for you because they’re the values you’re recruited for and those that you’re taught. Ive met these people both within the NHS and within private healthcare companies – the passion to improve things for patients does not change, the objective is always to maximise the provision for patient care. One thing I’ll personally always remember was a few months into my scheme on an education day in Leeds with approximately 30 other trainees, we were in a hotel conference room enjoying our lunch break when Sir David Nicholson came in under absolutely no obligation. He’d been speaking at an event also within the hotel and been informed that we were upstairs, as a former trainee he came up and spoke to us for quarter of an hour. About what I can’t remember but the fact that he did it will always stick with me as this was whilst he was being dragged in front of MPs and through the media and probably wanted nothing more than some time to himself. So thank you for that Sir David. My NHS career started on Wednesday 5th September 2012. The learning curve is steep and the challenge is immense. I’m coming to the end of my time on the scheme and I’m looking forward to facing the issues within healthcare for the rest of my career; it won’t be an easy time, certainly not in the next 5 years but I don’t feel scared by it either.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 10:57:42 +0000
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