Our Urgent Treatment Centre’s (UTC) Deputy Clinical Lead, Kuda Madzikanda was on hand to man the UTC stall earlier this month at the Primary Care Careers Fair, hosted by the CEPN team.
Along with other Care Group colleagues, Kuda volunteered to attend the event to talk about the various roles within the UTC, helping to raise awareness of primary care careers, and to answer questions from members of the public.
We caught up with Kuda to get his take on the event and how it was received by the public.
“We saw a variety of people who attended the Careers Fair. In the morning until about 2pm, there were more people who were already working, particularly in admin roles, who perhaps wanted change. We spoke to a couple of people who are currently working, one of them was working in a nursing home and was quite keen to work in the UTC on the night shift as a receptionist. I also spoke to a lady who works in a sexual health clinic and who wanted clerical work that was flexible hours because she is a mum.”
“In the afternoon the audience changed to reflect more younger people and pupils from local schools and colleges. A lot of the students were already doing health and social care courses and so there was a lot of interest in mental health or children’s nursing careers, for example.”
“Visitors to our stall were interested to hear about my job as a deputy clinical lead within the UTC. There was a lot of interest in the idea of a “male nurse” from the younger students. They were quite surprised. I was pleased to be able to explain that there are lots of different roles available to everyone. I spoke about the different branches within adult nursing; one could go into managerial roles, be a practitioner, you could go into education. There was a lot of interest in this from the young people.”
What did you get out of the day?
“I appreciated the opportunity to network with colleagues from different areas of the GP Care Group, as there were stalls from different sectors of the organisation. It was useful to know what other colleagues are doing within their services and how we can look for ways to work together in future. For example, there was a health coach at the event and so we got to talk about how we can refer patients who we see at the UTC who have obesity issues, low self-esteem and confidence about their health, for example. I really appreciated the opportunity to network. I look forward to attending more of these types of events.”
Click the link below to view a roundup of images of the day.
