A Taste of Frimley Park Hospital

On Thursday the 8th of November, Frimley Park Hospital held a careers event for sixth form students interested in perusing a profession within the NHS.

I arrived at the hospital at 4:15 along with some other college students, and we were kindly escorted by a nurse to the children's education centre within the hospital. It was on the other side of the building, passing the cardiology and radiology ward; seeing patients in neck braces and stretchers as we passed by. There was a queue of people as we were offered pens, lollipops and the hospital's magazine "InTouch" as we waited to sign in and get given a sticker with a letter on it.

I then proceeded to walk into the cafeteria and found two familiar faces from my college at a table near the food display. We all ate from the generous buffet and spoke of volunteering, our A-Levels and the Maths Challenge exam while waiting for the programme to begin.

At 5pm, we entered the lecture theatre next to the cafeteria and my friends and I sat at the front left, eager to hear the presentations that followed from the chief executive officer, a nurse, midwife, operative surgeon and medical obstetrician and gynecologist.

The talk were very informative and interesting, even though I'm set on medicine to become a general practitioner, it was lovely to have an insight to the life of hospital staff and the other career paths available (the midwife was especially enthusiastic- it was great to see someone so passionate about their job!). I attentively made notes during the presentation, eager to jot down everything so I wouldn't forget later (I got some compliments for my particularly geeky periodic table notebook as well... no shame).


An hour passed quickly, and we were then split into groups of ten according to our letter, mine being group I. Our group first went to a small room with various medical equipment spread across the table, including blood sample tubes (which I now know are colour coded according to purpose, e.g: purple for blood count), drips, stethoscopes and needles. I spoke to the gynecologist who spoke of how to get volunteering and different specialties to go into, such as dermatology which requires another 7 years of education- which is a possibility to consider.

On the other side of the table was a surgery simulator sort of machine, which is used for practicing keyhole surgeries by using two tong-like instruments to pick up a bead and place it on a small pedestal, which challenges your co-ordination while only looking at the screen (I could only get one bead- I guess I need more practice and possibly better glasses.)

 

After that, we traveled across the corridors to the physiotherapy ward, where we had a short tour of the gym and hydrotherapy pool. We were then given quick talks by the physiotherapists and completed a quiz to test our knowledge on the purpose of physiotherapy. It was unfortunately rushed due to over-running.

We then quickly met back at the cafeteria and had a 15 minute refreshment break where we completed a short evaluation form, before proceeding to our last talk about midwifery. Even though it's not the area I'm particularly interested, she was very persuasive amongst the other students and made a very fascinating talk. She spoke about her role within the hospital, what it takes to become a midwife, and several examples of conditions within the mother and baby, as well as procedures such as water birth and diabetes within babies.

The day went very fast and ended at 8pm, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. The only negative aspect was that I didn't have enough time to see the other rooms and talks, especially the junior doctor. However it was such an incredible experience and I hope to start volunteering at the hospital soon!