Callum, Apprentice Administrator in Education Team Division B

In celebration of National Apprenticeship Week, Meet Callum , Apprenticeship Administrator with the Education Team in Division B. Discover why Callum chose to pursue an apprenticeship at UHS and how his role impacts patient care. 

My name is Callum, and I am the Administrator for the Education Team in Division B. My role within the trust to support with the education of the nursing and support worker staff in Division B. This involves being the point of contact for our team, for example I monitor our teams’ email and send on to the relevant members of the team to ensure that queries and requests are responded to as quickly as possible. I also administrate for our lessons: booking rooms, putting sessions on VLE, and marking the attendance at the end of a study day. I also manage all of the information relating to student nurses coming into Division B for placements so that the clinical areas are aware of who is coming and when. I also support the students with making contact with their placement areas and ensuring that they have all of the resources they need to succeed. I started an apprenticeship in October 2022 in project management as I was interested in developing a career at UHS and project management intrigued me when I learned about it.

Pride in Caring

I pursued an apprenticeship at the UHS as I want to make as much as a positive change as I can during my career at the hospital. In my current role my impact on patient care is abstracted, I don’t impact the patients directly, but I do support in making sure that the staff caring for them have the most up to date and relevant skills as possible to deliver world class care. This perspective on my role in the care journey gives me a great sense of pride, and by taking an apprenticeship means that hopefully in the future I will be able to support more people and teams with affecting positive change for our patients.

Pioneering Spirit

The trust has a value of Always Improving and this value resonates with me the most as I am always seeking improved ways of performing my role. This is reflected in the trust as I always see teams that are willing to try new ways of working, or creating new systems to improve the work that we are performing. My project management apprenticeship has provided me with the knowledge and the tools to understand how sustainable and safe change can be created. My ambition is to be able to support many teams in the future with improving their service and then take the lessons learned and improve in other areas. Because of all of the change happening in the trust I am able to be a part of these changes which allows me to practice what I have learned about in my apprenticeship which helps to support with my growth and development.

One Trust One Team

The concept of being one team has influenced me in my apprenticeship as it allows me to consider a whole massive ecosystem for support. As new concepts come up as part of my learning, they are not always something my team are familiar with and so I have to go external to them to gain further understanding. This has led me to conversations with many different members of our trust that are all incredibly willing to share what they know and are very patient with helping me to understand. As my own understanding increases as well, I have had a few opportunities to share what I have learned with people across the trust (I also never miss an opportunity to recommend apprentices to all of these people)

Supporting Each Other

As part of a project management apprenticeship, I have to participate in a project for change and create a portfolio of my contributions. When I first started, I was part of a project that unfortunately stalled and couldn’t provide me with the experience I required. Shortly after I learned of an opportunity to participate in a different project that was being considered. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very knowledgeable about the area the project was being ran. Fortunately, my team stepped in to support me with learning about the subject, some with first hand knowledge and others with recommendations on where to find other resources. I was also supported to make contact to enquire about working on the project by my line manager. Thanks to their support I was accepted onto the project, and they have supported with all of my future queries on the subject no matter how granular.

Opportunity to Grow

Because of my apprenticeship I have had the opportunity to meet with and talk to so many people across the trust. All of them are incredibly knowledgeable and work in interesting areas of the hospital that I didn’t know existed before speaking to them. As I have developed professionally it has also provided me with the confidence to take a leap and reach out to people that aren’t necessarily relevant to my role, but they are interesting, and because our team at the trust are so supportive, they have been happy to talk to me about career paths and how they got to where they were. I have also gained the opportunity to participate in activities that I wouldn’t have considered before, such as the HCA interviews, which has been very eye opening to the other side of recruitment and is also a privilege getting to speak to people that want to work at the UHS and learn about them. My goals for the future is to finish my apprenticeship and then with a little luck join the Transformation Team as a project support officer. From there I plan to work on becoming a Project Manager in the trust so that I can support with delivering change for our patients and staff that positively impacts their care and work.

Conclusion

When I was still in school, a while back now, I was always led to believe that apprenticeships were for those that don’t have what it takes to make it in an academic setting. Since I have started my apprenticeship, I have learned how incorrect that assumption was. Apprenticeships, especially within healthcare, offer the same opportunities as going into more traditional higher education. They also offer the opportunity to learn more holistically, you can read about a concept in a textbook in the morning and then have made contact with someone in the trust in the afternoon whose entire job is focused on that concept and are excited to speak to someone about it. Doing an apprenticeship within the hospital also provides me with a great sense of pride as I am excited to put what I have learned back into the trust to help people. If anyone is considering an apprenticeship, I would recommend speaking to your line manager and our amazing apprenticeship team in the trust to see what fits in your role, or if what you want to learn doesn’t fit at the moment they may be able to support with creating a career plan to get you to where you need to be. I think there are something like 900 different apprenticeships at this point covering all types of careers, you won’t know whats there until you look.

To find out more about our apprenticeships, click here.