Placements explained

Second year Adult Nursing student Jack explains how placements work as part of his course, and how they can help guide your future career.

Placements start with the initial assigning of your ‘Home’ Trust, and for me this is King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Your Home Trust is where you’ll have the majority of your placements throughout your three years at King’s, with the exception of your community and elective placement.

The advantage of studying at King’s is the amount of fantastic Trusts it has affiliations with. This means as students we get a chance to work with some of the most experienced experts in their field. I have had placements in Respiratory, Emergency Medicine, Haematology, General Surgery, Neurosurgery and soon will get to experience the last placement of my second year in the Stroke unit at King’s. You will get to experience a variety of environments within the trust e.g. ward based, clinic Based, theatre.

During your time in placement, you will find particular specialties more enjoyable than others, but that is the point of placements. The different combinations of specialties will help you find what you want to pursue in the future. For me, Emergency Medicine and Neurosurgery left a great impression. Hence, in the future I will be looking to go into nursing in surgical areas e.g. scrub nurse, recovery nurse or nursing within the emergency department.

 Some placements are physically and emotionally tiring, but with that comes great rewards. Your experience of taking part in a patient’s episode of care can not only help you apply your knowledge from your academic aspect of nursing, but it also helps you understand how little things you do for your patients can sometimes have a great impact for them. At the end of the day, you might be exhausted, but knowing you have helped your patients on their road to recovery is a feeling not all professions get to experience.