Information for Schools and Colleges

Okay, so hi, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us for this virtual NHS fair. We're so glad that you've been able to join us this evening to find out more about the various roles and careers available to you within the NHS.

So we have got a jam packed evening ahead of us. So there's a number of live talks that you can attend, you're able to talk to doctors, nurses, social care workers, radiologists and radiographers. And we're really lucky to have tons of speakers from very niche areas that you may or may not have heard of.

And before so, optometry, we'll be hearing from critical care nurses, learning disability therapists, speech and language therapists, learning disabilities, psychologists, and also our university academics will also be there as well.

Just a point to note, you are muted. So all of our sessions, you will enter and you will be muted, but you are able to ask questions through the Q &A box. Okay. So as you can see on the screen, we've got lots of talks happening all evening.

Our first talk will be starting at 4 .45. And this is around career opportunities in optometry and dentistry. And at the same time, there's a talk for anyone interested in working in the care sector.

And you can find out all you need to know about becoming a doctor at 5 .15. And also what a career in mental health looks like and what you might be doing. So if you're someone who's driven by helping people, then you can check out our nursing session and find out how you can help others.

And this is at 6 .05pm. And if you'd like to know more about other career roles that might suit you, then head to our allied health profession talk at the same time, or our radiography and radiology talk as well.

So if you're wondering what course you might want to do to get into a particular career area, or you'd just like some advice on applying to higher education to study a healthcare course, then talk to our university experts at 650.

And finally, we have a talk on what it's like to be a pharmacist at 650 as well. And our event will close at 7 .30pm. So there's lots of opportunity for you to ask questions, as I said before, to the professionals you're interested in.

So into the different professions that you might be wanting to go into. We have experts in each of those fields at all of these sessions. So each session will have a number of speakers in attendance who work in the role associated to that talk.

And all of our sessions will allow you to ask questions about a particular role through the Q &A box. So this should be found at the bottom of your screens. If you are on a mobile phone, sometimes this isn't as visible, it may be in the left hand corner.

But you can ask all of your questions there and they'll be answered as part of the session. We'll also be asking some questions to our speakers to allow you to find out more about the day -to -day activities of a particular job and how each person came to decide this was the career for them.

So they'll be discussing how they decided to go into that particular area, as well as the things about their job and also providing honest opinions about what it's like to work in a fast paced environment, especially during these uncertain times.

So I'd like to open up this fair with a video from Dr. Curran. So for those of you on TikTok, you may recognise him. He is best known for spreading knowledge and information about keeping safe and staying healthy through his videos on TikTok, through Instagram and YouTube.

So this is Dr. Curran Raj. And as well as this, he obviously does work in the NHS and he is a surgical doctor and educator within the NHS. So I'm just going to play a video for you. Hey guys, Dr. Curran here.

First of all, I want to apologise for not being able to join you live today. Unfortunately, I had to film this yesterday because while this career fair is going on, I'll probably be scrubbed up in surgery.

If you've got any pressing questions, feel free to hit me up online. So I've been working in the NHS for about seven years and I've met people who do all sorts of jobs. A lot of people tend to assume that the NHS is full of doctors, surgeons, nurses, pharmacists, but there's actually way more.

What if I told you there's more than 350 potential careers out there? And remember, the NHS isn't just the hospital, it's the community as well. Okay, check this out. a 12 year old boy who's anxious can't express himself with words because he's being bullied and his parents have just had a nasty divorce, what do you do?

You help him make puppets based on his favorite tv show characters to help him express his feelings using those puppets. Now yeah that's an actual job and a really important one, it's a drama therapist.

So when I've got a really busy shift or I'm on call one of the highlights of my day is eating at my current hospital's canteen and the food they serve there is literally the best food I've had in a hospital ever, full stop, literal compliments to the chef.

So if you fancy yourself as a Nigella Lawson with a Mikra Wave or a Jamie Oliver, definitely go and consider becoming a chef in the NHS. It's just a couple of random jobs you may never have associated with the NHS but you know check out the Step Into NHS website and there's literally hundreds and hundreds of jobs that you probably never thought existed.

So before I leave you to it let's take a moment to recognize the amazing work done by all the frontline workers. in the hospital, in the community, public transport, delivery drivers, people who work in the supermarket and loads more.

Have an amazing careers day, best of luck. So that was Dr. Karan Raj. For anyone that's just joined us, Dr. Karan Raj is best known for his work on TikTok. He does also work within the NHS as a surgical doctor and educator, but he spreads knowledge and information about keeping safe and staying healthy through his short videos on TikTok, through Instagram and also YouTube.

He's really, really informative if you want to know more. And he's also got lots of fun facts as well on his pages, on his social media pages. So now that Dr. Karan has given us some information about the various roles that you might be able to go into within the NHS, it's really, really important for us to say how admirable it is that you actually want to go into the NHS and be part of making a difference and working to make a difference in some way.

So without further ado, all that's left to say is for you to enjoy the careers fair. We hope you find it useful and please check out our live talks and get your questions answered. We've got a number of useful websites for you to go to as well, just on the left -hand side of the screen.

And one in particular that Dr. Karan talked about was the Step Into NHS. If you scan the code on your screen now, that will take you directly to the page. There's loads of videos on there about different professions and lots of information about gaining work experience, which is often a requirement for some of these healthcare professions that you want to go into.

If you're gonna study those at university, check out the websites. The NHS has also got a really handy YouTube. Check out MDX's website if you're interested in studying with us as well. And as I said, there will also be university representatives running a talk where you can ask all your questions about going into higher education.

and studying a particular healthcare degree. If you have any questions, you can pop them in the Q &A box. I may not be the best person to answer those, but I'm happy to pop some of these useful links to you.

If you'd like, just pop me a message on the Q &A to ask for those links. You should have all received Zoom links to the sessions that you've booked on for, but just as a reminder for when they are, I'll pop that up on the screen for you now.

If you have any questions, please do pop them in the Q &A and I'll be happy to help you. Otherwise, please do go and enjoy the session. You have five minutes before the first session starts, so you can go and grab a coffee or a snack or whatever it is that you would like while you're listening to the panels.

So you can attend them all. You can dip in and out if you would like. However, there are some running at exactly the same time. The sessions are on demand. So if you have booked onto all of them, you can just click that same Zoom link and watch it back.

We'll also be making these available to you in some way after. So what session would be suitable for midwifery. You can go into the nursing session. We do have a midwife within that session as well. For any sessions that aren't or any professions that aren't covered kind of on this screen, go into the allied health profession session as this is all about all of the other particular professions that you can go into within the NHS.

So there'll be representatives there to answer questions on that as well. Thank you. So there's a question here around, do you have to be in all of the sessions? No, you don't. You can pick the sessions that you want to go into.

As I said, though, they're all available on demand, so if you've booked onto all of them, then you will have the links anyway and you can watch them back. Otherwise, you can just go into the talks that are of the most interest to you, but if you don't know what you want to do and you are interested in knowing a bit more about different professions, then you can dip in and out of the sessions listed above.

Okay, I'm going to end this session here because you need to get to your next session that's starting if you're going to any of the ones that are starting at 4 .45. I'm wishing you all the best of luck with whichever profession you decide to go into and whichever course you book onto.

Take care and we hope that you enjoy the session today.