Case Study

“My role is to help coordinate and support our students and apprentices within the trust. I think apprentices are really important for our organisation because they allow our staff a career development opportunity. The apprenticeships allow our staff to feel valued and to know that they’ve got career development opportunities and that the trust is willing to support them as much as we possibly can to help them fulfil their dreams. Ultimately, it’s great for our trust.

“We have a really good collaborative relationship with the University of Sunderland. We already take students from other nursing programmes and are already looking to expand our partners. Due to this good relationship, it led us onto the apprenticeship programme and it’s going really well, we’re really pleased.

“By doing an apprenticeship, you can really see that the candidates have got lots of life experience, they’ve got experience within the organisation and they bring so much to the role and I suppose all of those experiences, gives them the best start. It’s so nice to see them develop and be given that opportunity.

“For any apprenticeship, we’re looking for somebody who has a real desire to want to be a nurse and is prepared to put in the work and that in their home life, they are in a position to be able to commit to their studies, do their placement and do work on their base area. It can be quite a juggling act. Doing an apprenticeship isn’t an easy route, it takes commitment, but you’re really well supported by both the organisation and the University. I think if you have that desire and that passion, and you’re willing to put the work in, it’s a really good route to go down and it is a great opportunity.”

Published 8 November 2021