Ameera, 16-years-old from Newham High School, blogs for us on her virtual experience with our Widening Participation Team.

25 February 2021: Live chat with Aiysha Ahmed, Senior Occupational Therapist, Oncology

This session was really fascinating. You can really tell how much Aiysha enjoys her job, just by really listening to how passionately she talks about her roles and the work she carries out. I definitely learned a great deal, as I didn’t know much about being an occupational therapist and what it actually entails.

Listening to the talk made me learn that being an Occupational Therapist is about being of service, giving needed assistance to patients and being a huge part in their process of recovering and developing the skills they need for daily living.

The skills that I learnt for what is needed to be an Occupational Therapist are:

• Empathy - it’s something that you can always develop
• Patience - sometimes the process just takes its time
• Determination - as it genuinely is an intense role and you’re very involved in a person’s life
• Flexibility - you are going to be working with a wide variety of patients and have to be able to adapt to different situations and finally teamwork is essential, as well as prioritisation.
• Being an Occupational Therapist you have transferable skills and can try out other roles as well as moving around demographically, within the NHS of course.

Overall the session was very much enjoyable and I definitely discovered a lot!

12 March 2021: Healthcare Science Programme

The whole programme had been extremely informative. Hearing from the different healthcare scientists about what it is that their job involves was intriguing. It was also really interesting to hear that some of the healthcare professionals didn’t take the traditional route of going through medical school. That was comforting to hear there are always alternative routes available. 

4 March, 11 March, 16 March, 30 March: Dr Chandu’s sessions

Session one: communication skills

The first session really took me by surprise when they asked everyone to do a quick introduction. It was unexpected and really put me on the spot. Undoubtedly the session has helped me gain a sort of idea of what it is that you should talk about and all the things you should cover when asked this question.

I would definitely say the session has helped me improve more on my communicating skills and helped highlight what it is that I need to improve on.

Session two: the need to know about the role of a doctor

This session helped in answering all the questions I had, learning what really sets doctors apart from the other ‘helping people’ roles. It also cleared misconceptions; the idea that doctor’s know everything or that as soon as you graduate that you’re perfect. You're still learning and investing that knowledge as you go and picking up things as you experience them.

Session three: interview and application skills

The session really cleared most of my worries about taking an interview. I now know the basic structure of an interview and the best way of carrying a successful interview. Even though you may not get accepted in, the experience itself is a gain and you have that familiarity of what the experience is like. You can use that to your advantage and become better prepared for the next time.

Session four: skills day - everything learnt

The last session was really enjoyable to interact with the other attendees and discuss our viewpoints on the interviews we’ve seen. It was nice seeing a different perspective. I would definitely say that I left knowing what it is you should and shouldn’t do at an interview and the standard of how you should carry it out.