Date published: 20 November 2023
Students at Richard Rose Morton Academy recently received a visit from the MELISSA bus for an NHS careers event.
As part of the recruitment drive from Primary Care Services North Cumbria students at the Academy were provided with lots of information about careers in the NHS, including the opportunity to speak to a nurse and other NHS professionals.
Working alongside North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust and the MELISSA bus students were given a range of ideas and options about working in the NHS in the North Cumbria area (which includes the areas of West, East and North Cumbria).
Sam Gargett, Project Manager for Primary Care Services North Cumbria said: "We visited to speak to the students about the various roles in both primary and secondary care, that's available to them in North Cumbria. Also the types of training they can receive, from admin to management, clinical, nursing, GPs and General Practice.
"So we're covering all the roles across the system."
The MELISSA bus attending the event also provided students with some further insights into how this resource is used to provide training and beyond across the North East and North Cumbria. More information on the MELISSA bus can be found here.
Rachel Robinson, Assistant Principal at Morton Academy said: "It's good for the students just to experience something a bit different, something that's not in the classroom and obviously the bus coming is brilliant. We obviously do a lot in school but we really appreciate this kind of opportunity to broaden their offer. We've had lots of positive feedback from students so far this morning.
"As an academy we want the students to do as well as they possibly can and we want them to understand all the different options that are out there to them. We always say don't decide on one thing now it's good to keep your options open and it's good to find out lots of information from as many different sources as possible."
Natalie Thomson, Learning Facilitator for both Primary Care Services North Cumbria and North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust said: "It was great for them to talk to the nurse Adele, who was talking about a day in the life of primary care. They were all very interested and asked lots of good questions about what they needed in terms of qualifications and the different types of apprenticeships in the NHS."
Sam added: "I think what is really good for them is even if they don't know fully what they want to do, we've given them some ideas in terms of gaining some work experience and also ideas of things that they can put on their job applications."
Further careers events in North Cumbria are being developed and any feedback from these initial sessions will be used to continuously improve the programme.
