Taking the opportunity to do a non-clinical placement

Grace Ogunlola and Angie Hulst, final year physiotherapy students at the University of Brighton undertook a new type of six-week leadership placement at Sussex Community NHS Trust.

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University of Brighton final year physiotherapy student Grace Ogunlola

Grace explains: 'We both spent three days working on the leadership side of our placements: on projects and sitting in on trust meetings and then spent two days working clinically with a falls and fracture prevention and community rehab team.

My personal tutor is part of the placement team at our university and circulated an email to everyone about the opportunity to be a part of a new type of leadership placement.

I don’t see myself as naturally confident or a "leader" so I’m not quite sure what made me go for it. But, I expressed my interest and was so surprised to see I got it! 

I absolutely loved my time on my placement. I was worried due to it being a non-clinical placement that I would miss out on some key clinical skills.

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A Tweet from Sandra Speller, who supervised Grace and Angie, and is professional head of therapies at Sussex Community NHS Trust

However, you learn so much across different scopes of work I really developed my interpersonal skills, time management skills and confidence and learnt how to work autonomously. I would really recommend anyone to take the opportunity to do a non-clinical placement because you can learn so much.

Support workers

As part of one of the projects we delivered a training day to the unregistered workforce about the value they are to students learning on placements. 

This was an invaluable experience as I was able to reflect on the benefit of this workforce to my learning on my placements.

My biggest advice to any student going on placement is to use the whole team in your learning as they are all so knowledgeable and have so much to offer in your learning.'
 

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