On Thursday 12 July, Nottingham Academy Primary had four visitors from the NHS. We started the day with an assembly to introduce the NHS to Phase 3 and to explain the significance of the NHS and its 70^th anniversary in July, 2018.

After assembly, our visitors worked with Year 6.

Emma trains NHS healthcare apprentices. Cairon, who is an ex-pupil of Nottingham Academy, is a healthcare apprentice. They demonstrated all the equipment the use on a daily basis, including blood pressure monitors, pupil gauges, catheter bags and personal hygiene equipment. Cairon also showed us how to wash how hands to hospital standards. They focussed on the characteristic of accountability and responsibility.

Sharon works in electro-diagnostics and uses electronics to check patient’s hearing and eyesight. She provided activities based on optical illusions, checking pupil dilation, placing electrodes and checking for a squint. She told us all about the different jobs she has done to get to where she is today. She focussed on ‘resilience’.

Ada works as an Associate Professor at Nottingham University. She was a mental health nurse and teaches people about mental health. She brought in some play-doh, a model of a brain, a glove and some cycling safety equipment. We had to guess how the items related to her work. She told us about how the different departments all work together to help patients.  The focus of her session was ‘teamwork’.

The children had their life skills reinforced and learned an immense amount of new vocabulary.

We were grateful to our guests for coming in to interact with us and bringing so many interesting objects with them. Thank you very much.

Finally, a big thank you to Claire from Future’s Aspire Project who worked very hard to plan this event.

Here are some quotes from our guests:

Claire from Futures said, “We designed this activity to inspire year 6 students to think of themselves in relation to potential future careers.  We sought NHS and Nottingham University Health experts to act as role models for the children.  Resilience, teamwork and accountability are skills that these students will need in their transition to secondary school and their future careers.’’

Emma, Apprentice Health Care Trainer from NUH, said, “This was a great opportunity for NUH to work with children and let them know about apprenticeship routes to health.  We enjoyed enabling them to explore and play with different items that are used on a ward daily.”

Cairon, an apprentice healthcare worker, said, “It was great to come back to my old school to show the children and the teachers my career success and I hope that I have inspired some of them to follow in my footsteps.”

Ada, associate professor from the University of Nottingham, said, “It has been a great opportunity to share and discuss ideas with year 6 students around mental health and team work. It has been a real pleasure to be involved in the careers inspiration day, and to celebrate the 70^th anniversary of the National Health Service with the children”.

Sharon, a Healthcare Scientist, said, “I enjoyed my session here at Nottingham Academy.  The children were very enthusiastic and keen to try out the various tasks. I liked the way that some of the children were able to use their own words to explain what they understood about the phrase “resilience”.  Do not lose your enquiring, scientific skills.”