Work experience
Work experience placements at the Trust provide an excellent opportunity to gain insight into professions in the NHS.
They can support career choices, personal development, and help build your knowledge and skill sets.
Eligibility criteria
To be eligible for a placement, you must be in year 10-13 year-group and living, or studying, in the London Borough of Lewisham or Royal Borough of Greenwich.
Work experience opportunities may be available in three main areas:
Virtual work experience
Our virtual work experience programme is run in partnership with Oxleas NHS foundation trust and hosted by Springpod. We offer two weeks of virtual work experience and work related insight into clinical and non-clinical roles within the NHS.
Within each week's activity, there will be three sessions of keynote speakers talking about their real life experiences within their chosen careers, how they got started in their career paths, what is required and how they have progressed.
The expectation is that students will spend approximately 10 hrs of time on the platform completing various work-related topics and pieces of work. On successful completion, students you will gain a certificate of achievement for carrying out the work on the related topic weeks.
You can access our current virtual programme via this link Careers in the NHS (springpod.com).
Face-to-face work experience
The trust is working with Pathway CTM to provide face-to-face clinical and non-clinical placements for students. Clinical placements are for those considering careers in areas such as nursing, midwifery, pharmacy, therapy, and clinical support services such as healthcare assistants and nursery nurses. They take place in areas where patients are directly receiving healthcare; for example wards, physiotherapy locations and theatres. Non-clinical include areas such as Human Resources, Information Technology, Estates and facilities.
These placements are typically for one week and aims to enable young people to gain relevant and practical insight into related skills and develop an understanding of the world of work. We work closely with CTM pathway who coordinates work experience opportunities within the Trust. Please be aware that placements are extremely limited and as such, students are advised to continue to search for placement opportunities elsewhere.
Due to huge amount of interest from students for our 2024 work programme, the application process has been paused to avoid disappointment. We are currently working hard to build capacity to ensure we have sufficient number of placements to meet current demands before taking any more applications.
Medical placements
These are suitable for those who intend to study medicine and want a shadowing opportunity specifically concerned with the work of doctors. Applicants must be at least 16+ and for some specialties, students need to be 17 or 18 years old.
Please note: Observational placements are held during the summer, exact weeks to be confirmed by administrators. Availability is limited, competitive and preference will go to pupils who live/attend school in the London Borough of Lewisham for UHL and Greenwich for QEH. Applications must be submitted between 1st January – 31st January for that year. Requests made outside of this period will receive an automatic response but will not be read or accepted.
For observational placements at University Hospital Lewisham, please send a CV and covering letter to: LG.UHL-MedicalWorkExperience@nhs.net
For observational placements at Queen Elizabeth Hospital please send a CV and covering letter to: LG.QEH-MedicalWorkExperience@nhs.net
Please note these email addresses do not deal with Physiotherapy, Nursing or Midwifery placements as they will not be processed.
Further information
To learn more about potential careers in the NHS please visit: Step Into the NHS.
Here you can find out about the wide range of career options available, and take a quiz to decide what kind of role might suit you and your interests.