Employer of the Year award for KGH
KGH has won an Employer of the Year Award from The Bedford College Group (TBCG) for the way it has supported students with placements during the pandemic.
At a ceremony held on November 18 we were awarded the Work Placement Provider of the Year category for our commitment to introducing students to a real working environment.
TBCG includes Tresham College with its campuses at Wellingborough, Kettering and Corby.
Over the past 12 months KGH and the Group have worked closely together in giving students work experience.
During the height of the Covid pandemic we took on 70 students aged 16-35 as Ward Hosts to support front-line KGH staff.
They helped with tasks like making drinks, chatting with patients, helping them with their meals and enabling them to contact relatives (during a period when hospital visiting was not allowed) through Virtual Visiting computer tablets.
Placements have been a great success and led to jobs
The work placements have been a great success and some students have gone on to get jobs at KGH after finishing their studies.
KGH’s Head of Education & Learning, Sheila Turner said: “We have worked closely with the College to fit students to our Ward Host role which really helped us to maximise our support for patients and our own staff at this difficult time.
“Together, we developed an induction process where students are briefed in food hygiene, risk, and hospital procedures.
“They were taught and assessed to wear appropriate PPE to the areas they are working in, which includes eight wards, A&E, pathology and physiotherapy.”
Senior A&E Sister Deborah Wale said: “We can be really busy in A&E and have lots of elderly patients.
“The Student Ward Hosts have played a really valuable role in providing company for our patients who may be quite nervous, and are also helping us by performing some of the tasks which take us away from clinical care.”
Sarah Nolan, Head of Health, Care & Early Years at Tresham College, said:
“The students love the work and really feel they are making a contribution. They have received a very warm welcome from staff and are really pleased to help out and see, first hand, what sort of opportunities working in healthcare provides.
“This partnership will continue to flourish for the benefit of both College students and Kettering General Hospital. Moving forward, the work placement scheme will continue and the Hospital has also agreed to provide T Level placements for the new Health T Level programme which launched this year.”