It’s Week Nine of Year Three and we are finally back on campus for the first time since our OSCE exams in April! (If any current students are reading this…you will know that I personally have been on campus an awful lot – working Open Days, training Buddies, assisting with Nursing Selection Days…but probably unbeknown to you I haven’t actually had an academic reason to be here for some time!)

It’s been only three days and over the next few months I’m going to have plenty of campus based study to write about so for this blog I’m going to focus instead on everything you’ve ever dreamt of knowing about Clinical Placements which make up a whopping 50% of our course! (Please note all information stated in this blog is correct as experienced in the September 2016 cohort entry to the Child Nursing Programme and may be subject to change). Below you’ll find three sections – a breakdown of placement experiences, answers to frequently asked questions about placements and a short summary of my most recent placement experience on Neonatal Intensive Care. Read as little or as much as is useful or interesting to you!

BSc Child Nursing Placement Experiences

Throughout the three years – BSc Child Nursing students undertake 10 placement blocks. In Year One you are offered two six week placements – half spent Health Visiting or in Nurseries and the other half spent on a general children’s ward.

Year Two brings more variety and complexity with five placement blocks:

• Ward – Another general Children’s Ward placement – similar to first year but allocations will try to vary your experience with the types of Ward you are allocated
• Acute – One from either Accident & Emergency/Theatres/Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) or Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)
• Specialist – Can include Mental Health settings, Nurse Specialists, Research Nursing, Children’s Community Nursing Teams or even Private settings
• Schools – Either School Nursing or a placement within a Special Educational Needs (SEN) School
• Elective – is completely down to you! Either a full four weeks or two weeks topped up by a University based project – you plan and undertake your own placement OUTSIDE of the Universities partner Trusts. Some undertake Electives abroad through approved charities – others find Trusts elsewhere in London or the UK, often seeking a speciality of interest to them. Some students even choose to spend time with other professionals e.g. paramedics or social workers.

Year Three kick starts with two four week placements – one on the Ward and one further Acute and finishes with one massive thirteen week block; your final management placement.

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (Placements)

What will you need for placement? Three sets of uniform (tunics and trousers) were supplied to us by the University at the start of the course. Helpfully they have a Uniform Fitting session which means you know you are taking away the right size. Further uniform is also available for purchase through the suppliers. Shoes you have to sort yourself but it is better to wait until you are on the course for two key reasons. One, Universities and Trusts have differing Uniform policies – what one University deems suitable footwear may not be appropriate elsewhere – so you should always first consult the Uniform Policy. Two, once you are a Registered Student you benefit from lots of rather handy Student Discounts that may make this shopping trip less costly! You will also require a fob watch – as Nurses we have to work “bare below the elbow” to ensure good hand hygiene so you won’t be able to wear your watch. Fob watches are cheap but also are often included in goodie bags when you sign up to the Royal College of Nursing/Unison.

How are placements allocated?

The Placement Allocations team arrange all our placement experiences aside from your aforementioned Elective. As Child Nursing Students we move between Trusts and Boroughs experiencing a wide range of services. The team take into account your London Term Time address and travel routes to the available areas and always try to keep travel time within 1 hour 30 minutes each way where possible. They also aim to offer a wide range of placement experiences to ensure you are afforded good opportunities to cover the full assessed skill set across the year. We are able to put forward preferences where there is a particular area of interest to us and final management placement is allocated from four area preferences and a small comments section made available at the start of third year. Generally the team aim to upload our placement allocation four weeks before the start of a placement – from there it’s up to us to make contact, obtain our rota and prepare ourselves for our new allocation.

How are students supported on placements?

We have a variety of support available to us during Clinical Placements. Every Placement area has an Academic Staff Member allocated as a contact – known as a “Link Lecturer” they will often visit or provide drop-in sessions during the placement blocks to check in with you. Most teaching hospitals additionally have a “Practice Education Facilitator” – a Nurse in charge of Pre-Registration Education on site who will make themselves known to you. Whilst on placement the area will assign you a Nurse Mentor who will co-ordinate your learning but to get the best out of a placement area you can also enjoy time working with other clinical staff members (only 40% of your placement time needs to be undertaken with your allocated mentor).

How do students learn on placement?

As well as working under supervision of Nurses to achieve assessed skills and gain feedback on your clinical practice, you can also arrange time with other professionals and in other related link areas. For example, on my Health Visiting Placement I spent time with the GP, Practice Nurse, Community Midwife, Community Pharmacist, Dietician, and Social Prescriber. I even took time out to attend a Breastfeeding Workshop and the Diabetes Education Service to broaden my community experience and learning. I was then afforded the opportunity to feedback my learning to my Health Visiting mentor which helped update her own breastfeeding advice to the current protocol.

Whilst you have defined skills to achieve each year, there is also space to input personal learning objectives. As a student you are “supernumerary” which means you don’t count in the staff numbers – make the most of this freedom and explore opportunities across the Multi-Disciplinary team.

How do you prepare for a placement?

With four weeks ahead of a placement it’s wise to put in a little pre-reading ahead of your placement. When I make contact with a placement area for the first time, I always make sure to confirm Uniform Policy (where we are not required to wear the City Uniform) and ask if there is any reading they can recommend. Lots of placement areas now provide Student Induction Packs which are made available to us online or can be sent across by e-mail. These often include common conditions, procedures and medications we might expect to come across – enabling us to read ahead and attend placement well versed in the basics.

Can I work alongside the course?

A very common question that often occurs when I talk about placements is whether we can undertake paid work alongside the course. Our placement experiences are expected to cover a full 24/7 picture of care (including weekends and nights!) Hours vary from 12.5 hour rotational shifts 3 or 4 days a week to 8 hour weekdays.

The University asks that you undertake no more than 48 hours of work in any seven day period (including placement and any paid/unpaid work hours). So 12.5 x 4 = no paid work that week!

Plenty of students, myself included manage to upkeep paid work alongside their course! In London there are plenty of opportunities to work ad-hoc either for the University or for Hospitality events and other agencies – where you simply sign up to work only the events you are available for.

If you have no prior HCA (Health Care Assistant) experience you can also join the Staff Bank after successful completion of First Year. This is often good pay and also helps contribute to building your clinical skills. Many students come to the course with prior HCA experience which they upkeep on the Bank or transfer to a local Trust Bank.

Life on Placement: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (Acute)

I have just completed a four week Acute Placement on a busy Level Three Neonatal Intensive Care Unit – Level Three means they take some of the smallest and critically unwell babies in London (and often from settings outside of London too!)

Neonatal Intensive Care Nurses undertake further Postgraduate Training – attending University Part Time to work in this specialist environment which meant that in comparison to the Wards I had to work under closer supervision than I had maybe grown used to – taking my own caseload of patients in Year Two.

I was provided with a question booklet that included researching common conditions of prematurity that I might see on the unit, developing a care plan for a term baby and drug calculation practice. In Neonatal medicine, drug dosages are often astonishingly small in comparison – so it is important to refine your calculation skills and learn how to convert between milligrams, micrograms and nanograms.

I received teaching from the Doctors through Clinical Simulation sessions and from the Breastfeeding Specialist Nurse – I can now confidently teach a new mum to breastfeed!

The Trust also ran scheduled teaching sessions available for all Student Nurses to attend through their dedicated Education Centre – I was on shift and attended a Chaplain led session on managing bereavement.

I was able to develop my clinical skills – performing heel prick tests for blood spots and capillary gas/glucose testing. I passed Nasogastric feeding tubes and fed via bottle and Nasogastric tube. I learnt how to suction an endotracheal tube and how to understand ventilator settings. I also learnt the checking process for blood products for transfusion and the extra observations needed during transfusion therapy.

In Year Two our pathophysiology module teaches us the basics of Neonatology – covering common conditions of both the term and preterm neonate – Jaundice, Necrotising Enterocolitis, Respiratory Distress Syndrome and Patent Ductus Arteriosus. I was able to observe and assist care for babies with these conditions first hand.

I saw new admissions straight from Obstetric Theatres and Delivery Suite through to long term patients finally discharged home with Mum and Dad. I reassured, helped take family photos, explained procedures and helped new parents out.

I was able to undertake my annual assessed “Episode of Care” on this placement – leading the care of two HDU (High Dependency Unit) babies across a shift. I had to liaise with Doctors, Pharmacists, Speech and Language Therapists. I was communicating changes and delegating task to my Mentor throughout the shift and had to deliver both written notes and a verbal handover to the Night Shift Nurse at the end of my shift. I had to write up my own reflections on this experience before receiving written feedback on my performance from my mentor.

Importantly, I was dreading this placement. I did not feel confident, I was concerned about the complexity of the care offered in this environment and having predominantly worked with older children and teenagers prior to the course I have never really considered myself a baby fan. This placement turned all of that around (much to the concern of my boyfriend who prefers his grand ideas of road tripping the USA and selecting a cute Labrador to me deciding babies are my thing). I enjoyed the autonomy with which Intensive Care Nurses work – and experiencing the varied roles available for career progression within the unit. I enjoyed experiencing the varied levels of care and working with a huge range of professionals. I experienced exceptional family centred care from teaching and supporting new parents to supplying cute little memory boxes containing knitted gifts from kind donors in the community. I was also excited to see the amount of research that was active within the department. As a former A Level Science nerd, research is something I am keen to explore throughout my nursing career and the relatively new and exciting specialism of Neonates affords a great deal of opportunity to become research active.

And that’s me for October! I’m off to spend a little me time trying to teach myself to knit on YouTube so that one day I might knit teeny, tiny bobble hats for preemies! Too cute!

I’m Lou – a bubbly, relentlessly energetic Yorkshire lass in my 3rd and Final Year of the BSc (Hons) Child Nursing degree.

The last two years have been an absolute whirlwind of adventures but I’m going to do my best to talk you through my Nursing journey from Pre-Application to here – right now, sitting on my laptop, Floor 6 of the library looking out over Central London with my coffee and banana! Scroll or read to the end for my personal top five interview/application tips!

It’s Friday – 12th of August 2016. Lunchtime. I’m juggling the post lunch dishes, cups, and cutlery from 24 preschool children – attempting to assist the chef – she’s alone today so I stayed to help load the dishwasher. I’d been in the Preschool for 6 months – taking the occasional blocks out to train with the Royal Navy Reserve and manage Summer Youth Programmes. Balancing work, volunteering and adventurous activities and often pushing 7-day weeks had become a norm for me – this week was no different…

I finished my A Levels in 2008 achieving AAB in Biology, Chemistry and Drama & Theatre Studies. I undertook an Apprenticeship in Outdoor Education, tried my hand at two years of a BSc in Chemistry and hopped from one seasonal job slot to the next: stilt walking the ports of Mexico dressed as a clown, swinging through the trees of the French of Alps in my climbing harness and even firing Barbie from cannons in the name of the fire triangle to teach school groups at the Science Museum in South Kensington. I worked with children and young people 0-19, achieved management positions and even won awards – but I never really found job satisfaction.

So here I am loading a dishwasher when one of the nicest and most polite colleagues I have ever worked with in my time spoke out: “You’re wasting your life!”

I was stunned – I listened in awe as she told me about her ICU (Intensive Care Unit) Nurse Training at Great Ormond Street – the course, the placements, the opportunities…opportunities that I had just the right qualifications, skill mix and personality to chase in her opinion. So why was she instead watching me dancing to Take That loading the dishwasher?

I went home for the weekend and began avidly researching – Nursing degree programmes, Nursing careers, opportunities for career progression in Nursing, where you can work as a Nurse…

As a child I wanted to be an Ice Skater, a fireman, to play in a Military Band, to teach, to be a Dentist – I’d never considered Nursing. Nursing in my mind was trotting about with a camping lantern taking 20 versions of my grumpy old grandad their morning brew. Nursing was not leading teams, researching, teaching, developing skills and knowledge throughout a career, working solely with children, young people and their families…in effect everything that I was seeking in a career!

Results day was in a matter of days, the University web pages were awash with Clearing vacancies – why wait? I had written up and submitted the UCAS statement by Wednesday, had a phone interview Thursday, and on Friday – just one week after my colleague took it upon herself to tell me I was wasting my precious time on this planet, I arrived in London for my interview at City.

It was one day later – Saturday, on a train out of Waterloo my e-mail pinged – one little ping changing the course of my life forever.

From that first booklet refreshing my A Level Biology to giving my first injection on a plastic bottom – I spent the first 9 months of my degree building my knowledge and skills in the safety of the University lecture theatres, seminar rooms and state of the art Simulation Ward facilities – thankful of the opportunity and keen to absorb everything!

I spent 12 weeks in Clinical Practice – the first half in the homes, children’s centres and community clinics of Tower Hamlets exploring the role of the Health Visitor. Not so dissimilar to my role in the preschool I felt at home and took great interest in the unforeseen autonomy of community practitioners.

My final six weeks of first year I spent on a children’s respiratory ward – my first ever clinical experience, I’d never been on a hospital ward before in my life. Everything was new and exciting, and I spent every Tube journey pouring through every book on asthma, cystic fibrosis and respiratory medicine I could get my hands on.

Second year appeared from nowhere and within just six weeks of teaching I was back out on placement, in at the deep end with five weeks of winter in Accident & Emergency. I remember my first shift seeing a child hunched on the bed of the Resus bay in the famed “tripod position” we had been taught about – pale, fighting for every breath. I remember my mentor telling me to put on gloves, and quietly suggesting this didn’t look good – at that moment I was terrified and had no idea how on Earth I had ended up here so quickly. Within a couple of weeks, I was fitting slings, triaging patients, assisting in resus and thriving from the variety and pace of every shift. My confidence ballooned! I went on to a Special Needs School – working in Early Years with children with physical and sensory disabilities. I learnt Makaton, read books, sang songs and treasured every single moment.

I spent time in University developing my Anatomy & Physiology, exploring Critical Care through my Elective module and learning about both Acute and Long-Term Care.

I went on to further placements in a Private Outpatients supporting Consultants – specialists in their respective fields across London and out on a busy surgical ward – focused mostly on trauma/orthopaedics. I’d gone from so afraid I could barely find it in myself to put on my gloves to managing three/four patients with minimal supervision and really beginning to feel like a Nurse.

I saw out the year on my Elective Placement in the Peak District where I worked on multi-speciality Paediatric Theatres whilst enjoying my best outdoor life on the side! I saw my first surgery, confidently recovered and returned my own patients and even got the chance to escape over obstetric side to see my first caesarean deliveries!

Third year kicked off with a placement on a Gastroenterology Ward and most recently, four weeks on Neonatal Intensive Care.

I’ve cared from babies from their very first breath in theatres, to a seventeen-year-old whose own stunts resulted in two broken legs and a lot of surgery. From the homes to the hospitals, from the richest private patients to families barely getting by, from the critically ill intubated child to the pre-schooler you’re chasing on the ward scooter…every day is astoundingly different.

All this coming from the girl who runs up the hunger of a table of friends in Pizza Express for 20 minutes only to order the same pizza she ordered on the last five visits – suddenly able to make a huge life decision that will change her forever in a matter of days!

But City made it so easy! That first friendly chat with the Law student on the Clearing phone line near singing about her love for the University. The naturally entertaining lecturer at interview who was so very down to Earth and passionate about his career. The Student Ambassador on interview day who keenly answered all my questions and spoke with such energy about the course. I felt so at home here, and that was at a rather daunting, life-changing interview. So naturally over the last two years I’ve practically become a part of the furniture! Always looking for new and exciting activities to be involved with – including this blog!

I have an exciting year ahead – with dissertation, a leadership module, clinical skills and of course that all important final 13-week management placement and I’m inviting you on my journey, all the way to NMC (Nursing & Midwifery Council) registration.

Maybe you’re reading this because you too want to become a Registered Children’s Nurse? 

Thinking back to my first steps I’ve compiled my top five tips to help you get started with the application process and that all important Personal Statement!

1) WHY do you want to be a Children’s Nurse? You can eat the 6 C’s for dinner and recite the NMC Code by heart but it makes no difference if your hearts not in it! Take the time to map out everything that inspires you about Children’s Nursing and don’t be afraid to stray into your undying love for research if that’s what drives you. Nursing is an ever diversifying profession and it takes all sorts. What appeals to one could be another Nurse’s worst nightmare. Be honest about your drive – because you will speak more passionately about it.

2) A “Child” is anyone under the age of 18. This course is not all about cute babies and Peppa Pig appreciation! Our patients range from the tiniest premature babies to the largest 6ft 3 teenager and we spend a great proportion of our time working not only with the patients themselves but their families! I feel Child Branch are therefore pushed to be the greatest of communicators. At Application and Interview stage, it’s no secret – they are looking for prospective students who appreciate the diversity of the branch!

3) Sell your skills. Nowadays, it is phenomenally hard to arrange clinical experience prior to your application – and Universities increasingly understand this. Whilst you may not require specific clinical experience to undertake the course – experience certainly helps. Where your experiences are not clinical they can still be valued! Use your Personal Statement to sell your transferable skills that might be useful to Nursing. Have you for example worked in a team? Negotiated with an unhappy stranger? Taken the lead in a challenging situation? It’s all about selling these examples and showing you understand how these are applicable to Nursing.

4) Don’t spend your life savings (or your summer holiday) on textbooks! It’s all very tempting when you are very excited about commencing the course to spend £100 and four weeks of your summer holiday pouring through five variations of “Children’s Nursing” the textbook. Stop! Nursing is quite an intense and full time course – take the summer to unwind, relax and be ready to throw all your energy at the course in September. Not only that – City Library is exceptional! I have purchased just one book so far on my degree programme as our essential and recommended texts are all readily available to borrow from our library and even better – many are available as e-books to explore from the comfort of your own bed without even visiting the campus. Added to this we often benefit from lecturer distributed discount codes and student prices where we do choose to purchase our own copies. So save your money and enjoy your summer break!

5) Interview secret – it’s not all in the answer! Nursing interviews are lengthy and most often group based for a reason. You can give the most textbook perfect answers but it won’t necessarily mark you out as the best candidate. They’re also looking at your group interaction – how you work with others in the interview and even how much you engage and show interest throughout the day. If you are unsuccessful at a University interview – always seek feedback where possible as this can help inform and support your performance at any further interviews.