Health and Social Care

The field of Health and Social Care is broad but it’s basically about people’s wellbeing. Nursing is a vocational degree and can be studied full or part time. Counsellors, Psychotherapists, Psychologists use a variety of methods to work with clients with a wide range of issues, or specialise in an area such as eating disorders or addiction. Social workers support service users, including children and parents, older people or people with disabilities. You may specialise in a particular health or social issue or type of therapy.

Entry Requirements
You need five GCSEs (A-C) including English, maths and/or a science subject for a nursing diploma plus two or three A levels for a degree. Counsellors are usually accredited with a professional body (see the BACP website) and psychotherapists or psychologists need specific training (see the UKCP and HPC websites). Social Workers need a degree or masters in social work for which you will need five GCSEs (A-C) including English and Maths, at least two A levels, or equivalent. An Access to Higher Education qualification or work experience may also be a route of entry. Social workers must join a register, and renew every three years in order to practice. Any job where you will be working with children or vulnerable adults will require a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check.

Work experience
You could get voluntary or paid experience in a social work or care setting. See the Social Work and Care Careers website. There are some voluntary counselling placements available whilst you study for your qualification.

Hours
Nurses usually work 37.5 hours a week, including unsociable hours. Counsellors, psychologists or psychotherapists usually work standard office hours seeing clients for around 20 hours a week, sometimes in the evening and weekends. In private practice you could work from your own home. Social workers mainly work standard office hours with some nights ‘on call', or can also be based in residential settings.

Income
Starting salaries for full-time counsellors and therapists are around £19,000 - £27,000 rising to  £30,000 - £47,000 with more responsibility or qualifications. Therapists in private practice typically charge £30 to £50 an hour. Social worker starting salaries are around £19,500 - £25,000 rising to £26,000 -£40,000 with experience/responsibility.

Opportunities
Check the NHS Jobs website or NHS Trusts for nursing jobs. You could also work with private hospitals, nursing homes, HM Forces or the prison service. Social work opportunities are mostly with local authorities but you could also work for charities, private care homes, agencies, NHS trusts and prisons. Jobs may be advertised in the local and national press, employers' websites and specialist, recruitment agencies.
 

Graduate profile: Adam Williams

1. What subject(s) did you graduate in and from where?
BSc (Hons) Adult Nursing 2004 Salford University, MSc Advanced Practice 2011 Salford University
 

2. What is your current job role? Please provide a brief description of your duties
I am an Advanced Nurse Practitioner in Accident and Emergency in Stockport. My role involves the comprehensive assessment, examination, diagnosis and management of a wide range of patients including prescribing any medications, investigations such as scans and x-rays and referring them for admission into hospital when appropriate. This very senior advanced role enables me as a nurse to undertake a role similar to a senior doctor.

3. What skills, knowledge and qualities does your job require?
My job requires a broad range of advanced clinical skills including assessing patients, examining the main body systems and deducing a correct diagnosis based on clinical findings and creating a treatment plan specific to each patient that presents themselves to us. To work at this level I have had to undertake a two year Master’s degree in advanced clinical practice and work closely with senior medical colleagues to ensure continuous development and extending of my knowledge. I am able to perform a large range of advanced skills not normally available to nurses such as arranging scans, x-rays and other investigations to aid my diagnosis and management of the patients. I am also able to prescribe medicines for patients if appropriate and review and discharge them from the hospital. This role enables me to fully contribute to the multi-disciplinary healthcare team to provide a better service to patients and often discharge them from the hospital quicker and provide a very high level of quality care.

4. What are the benefits of the degree/qualification(s) you studied for?
The benefits of studying at Master’s level in advanced practice were that I was able to develop advanced skills in patient examination and diagnosis. This level of examination and diagnosis is not part of a basic nurse’s role and the course enabled me to develop these skills specifically towards urgent care, medical admissions and emergency medicine. The Master’s degree enables me to perform this role, but also to continue to develop my skills in any direction I wish to progress in such as to become competent in more advanced skill, such as managing critically ill patients, insertion of chest drains, insertion of arterial lines and invasive monitoring and to request a broader range of investigations such as CT scans. This continuous development of the role enables me to provide an even more comprehensive care package for patients and the feedback of this role has been excellent and patients are extremely grateful for this.

5. Are there any additional activities or work experience that helped you?
As part of my career, I spent time in ICU (Intensive Care Unit), A&E and Acute Medicine to gain experience and develop my skills in order to prepare me for becoming and advanced nurse practitioner. In addition, during my time as a student nurse I was able to undertake a clinical placement in the USA where I worked in an emergency department to compare practice to the UK. I also had a clinical experience within a prison in the UK, again to broaden my range of experience and skills. I also undertook the non-medical prescribing course which enabled me to become registered on a separate part of the Nursing and Midwifery Council website and allows me to prescribe almost any medicine for patients in the same way that doctors can. This means that I can ensure medicines such as pain relief are available to patients without having to wait for a doctor giving them a much quicker and better experience in the emergency department.

6. Is there any other advice you would give to someone interested in working in a similar field?
I would advise people looking to work in this field to take every opportunity to develop their skills and experience. I would advise that nurses wanting to undertake these advanced practice roles to ensure they have completed their foundation degree in nursing, ensure they have a variety of clinical experience in different settings and to undertake the non-medical prescribing course at their earliest opportunity as this will become an essential component in their advanced role.

7. How did you find your current job and what was the application process like?
I found my current role by searching for jobs on nhsjobs.com http://www.nhsjobs.com. Due to the advanced role and the massive responsibility on me in my day to day role the application process was the most difficult I had experienced in my career. After completing a detailed application form I was shortlisted for interview. The interview consisted of a ten minute presentation and a 45 minute questions and answer session after this to a panel of five very senior members of the hospital Trust including the lead medical consultant, a consultant nurse and the assistant director of nursing which was a very daunting and challenging experience!

8. What do you think are the main keys to success in your field?
The main keys to success are determination to succeed and continuously develop myself personally and professionally. I also think the key is to take the challenges I am presented with head on and continue to be passionate and ambitious in my career and my career development. I am always looking out for opportunities to improve my skills and progress my career and feel I have the best job in the world.

9. What are your future career options?
I remain an extremely ambitious person and the opportunities to continue into further promotions in the NHS are available to me. In the future I would like to take on a dual clinical and corporate role so that I can continue to deliver advanced clinical skills and practice to patients but also to be pivotal in shaping and developing patient’s services in the future to continue to change and improve them for the benefit of the patients. I feel that the only tangible way to do this will be to continue to progress to the role of either the Director of Nursing or Chief Executive.

10. How has being lesbian, gay or bisexual impacted your career, if at all?
I feel that by being a gay man in a senior NHS role enables me to be a role model to other LGB&T people in the NHS. I also feel it enables me to have a greater understanding from the patients point of view if LGB&T patients come through the emergency department and feel it is important to be out at work. Prior to attending the Stonewall Leadership Programme, I didn’t see my sexuality as being one of the most important factors in my life but that course showed me that it is important to not ‘edit’ my sexuality for the purpose of just ‘fitting in’ at work. It also enabled me to realise that people perform better when they can be themselves.

11. How important was it that your university provided specific services/advice for you as an LGB student?
 I think it is very important that universities provide LGB&T services such as groups and meetings to provide a support network and a place to share experiences no matter how confident or not about their sexuality. Some of these networks may even be a life saver for those in fear or those being bullied or harassed about their sexuality which unfortunately still exists today.