Max Sagar
Youngsters across the Fylde coast spent a week at Blackpool Victoria Hospital to gain knowledge on various roles within healthcare.
The Trust was recently involved in ‘Takeover Challenge’ which is an annual initiative to provide youngsters the opportunity to gain work experience in a variety of areas within the different services and teams in the NHS.
Rebecca Booth, Children’s Services Engagement Lead for the Trust, organised the week for the seventh year and arranged for teams to benefit from a fresh perspective on their work and involve young people in projects they are working on.
She said: “The young people shared their ideas on how we can improve their service and they had the opportunity to see what happens ‘behind the scenes’ in a working hospital.
“Takeover is our favourite week of the year; it’s a fantastic opportunity for us to learn from young people and to share ideas on how we can improve our care.
“Some services at the Trust don’t often have the opportunity to meet the patients they care for, and I think it brings a refreshing reminder of how important their roles are.
“Similarly, it gives young people the opportunity to learn more about careers in the NHS that they may not know a great deal about.
“The teams that were taken over were: Maternity Team, National Artificial Eye Lab, Orthoptics, Patient Experience Team, Chaplaincy, Equality and Diversity, Sterile Services and the Volunteer Navigators. We’ve also got young people spending the day with the Cancer Team in December.
“We’ve received some fantastic feedback from those involved, and it’s all thanks to the support from teams across the Trust that this event is always such a great success.
“It really wouldn’t be possible for us to host this event without the support from our fantastic teams who are always so keen to get involved with developing our future workforce.”