UTC Healthcare Challenge

27th February 2020 - By

We kicked off 2020 by working with the staff and students at UTC (@NEF_UTC). As part of the curriculum, students at the college work on industry challenges, set by genuine businesses, to help them to develop and demonstrate work place skills. This is the second year the AHSN NENC have supported the challenge, and it was a great piece of work to be involved with!

For the healthcare challenge 2020, we looked to our current open call which focuses on solutions to the ongoing challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). After giving the group an overview of AMR and the associated challenges, we tasked the group with developing a campaign, like those of Public Health England. Working in teams, the students had to work together over 4 workshops to create their comms plan…

WORKSHOP 1

In week one, we worked with infection control nurses and experts from the AHSN team to make sure that the group had a good understanding of AMR – it was important to make sure that everyone was on the same page! The students really impressed us with their existing knowledge and their engagement with the workshop.

WORKSHOP 2

In the second session, we introduced public health campaigns – the group discussed what they thought made the campaigns successful, and what could be improved. This session also touched upon key comms components like tag lines and logos. this week also saw the group move into their working teams and begin to think about what they might create.

WORKSHOP 3

This session, the teams were able to really focus on what their campaign would look like. Each group was given a board and plenty of resources to make a start. It was great to see how many of the students really engaged with the program of work and they showed real enthusiasm for creating their own campaign. There were TV ads, radio jingles and even a rap…

WORKSHOP 4

The final week meant only one thing – presentations! We kicked off the session with some useful hints and tips regarding presentation styles and then it was over to the groups! Despite some hesitation initially, the teams absolutely gave it their all and we were so impressed by their efforts! A huge well done to all the teams.

It was a great challenge to support, and it’s so important that we make the time to support work like this. In feedback, the learners stated that they felt they had developed real work placed skills and enjoyed the challenge of working to a deadline and brief – an opportunity that would not have been available had the AHSN NENC, and other organisations like it, given time to this project.

We need to make sure that we are supporting work just like this, to inspire the next generation of healthcare workers and innovators.