Health T Level student Madison off to uni for Adult Nursing degree

The combination of classroom tuition and 315 placement hours has proven the perfect post-16 education model for Madison, who admits she is a “practical learner” and has thrived while acquiring invaluable work experience at Nimbuscare’s Community Diagnostic Centre.

Management staff at the not-for-profit organisation deliverer of primary health care services in York have been so impressed with Madison that she has been handed the responsibility of carrying out fully supervised ECG (electrocardiogram) tests on patients.

Her experiences on the T Level course have also convinced Madison that degree-level study is now the pathway she wants to pursue as a route into the healthcare industry. 

“I’ve just been accepted to do Adult Nursing at uni,” Madison said. “I don’t like the theory side of things too much but, having done a T Level, I think I can now sit and do it at uni.

“I can put my mind to it now, which I couldn’t do at the start of the course. I’ve got four uni offers, but I’m thinking of going to Leeds Beckett or York St John.

“The other offers are from the University of Huddersfield and University of York.”

Madison, 18, is also excited by the potential vocational directions she could follow once she graduates from the three-year nursing course. 

“I’d love to come back to Nimbuscare or work in a hospital,” she declared. “I’d very much like a job in an ICU (Intensive Care Unit), but I know I’d need to do a different course for that. 

“I feel that working in an A&E department in a practical and fast-paced setting is kind of who I am, too, and I’ve also always said that, if I got a job as a health care assistant, I would take it, because it’s very hands-on work and you can become more specialised with access courses.” 

As she found herself acquiring more and more knowledge with Nimbuscare, Madison decided to list all the skills she has acquired on her T Level placement and soon found out she had identified 21.

They will represent a strong foundation as she continues her education and eventually embarks on a career in the industry.

“You can expand on the T Level in so many different ways because the placement gives you options to learn more than you already know, as the profession is always changing and adapting,” Madison pointed out. “I’m also a practical learner and it’s easier for me to learn when I’m doing something.

“I’ve learnt more skills than I thought I would on placement. I have been taught how to do ECGs and about the different types of blood vials that we use.

“I also get encouraged by some of the health care assistants to take more responsibility in running some clinics and I’ve been doing ECGs with another member of staff, who’s always over my shoulder making sure I’m doing it right.

“I wouldn’t have seen myself having that level of responsibility 12 months ago, so it feels good to have accomplished something.”

Madison has also appreciated the opportunity to practice and improve her interpersonal skills – a quality that is so important in such a public-facing role. 

“I’ve learnt a lot about patient communication,” she enthused. “That’s probably one of the most important things because, if you don’t communicate with the patient, they probably won’t trust you and will put their guard up.

“When I first started, I was shadowing some of the ladies here and they encouraged me to have a go at it, even if it was just explaining to the patient what I was doing in the room. I’m grateful for that, otherwise I would probably still be as shy as I was when I first came here.

“In this placement, you see a lot of different people from different backgrounds and learn about why they are here and, when they explain that to you, it makes you want to do your best to help them.”

Those verbal exchanges are role played extensively in the college classroom prior to the Health T Level students going out on placement, with Madison adding: “We do practical scenarios at College, where we talk to dummies.

“We prepare for different situations to see how we might react to make sure nothing goes wrong. You’re given the baseline knowledge you need at College and you apply what you learn there wherever you are on placement.” 

Nimbuscare was recommended to Madison as a placement option by her College tutors, who thought it would be suited to her personality and skillset.   

It proved an inspired choice with Madison adding: “I’ve enjoyed it here so much that I’ve told people in the year below that, if they get the chance to do a placement here, they should go for it.”

Due to Madison’s impressive contributions as Nimbuscare’s first-ever T Level student, that opportunity will now be open to others, with Clinical Manager and Educator Melanie Carter declaring: “Madison is our first T Level student and it has gone really well so, although we have to be quite mindful that we can’t take on as many students as we’d perhaps like to, we’ll definitely look to continue with placements.

“From a Nimbuscare perspective, it’s really good to have the link. We know York College is very popular and, in terms of the Community Diagnostic Centre (situated adjacent to the Askham Bryan Tesco branch car park), it is very good geographically.

“With the T Level model of learning, I also feel you can actually put into practice what you’re learning in College, along with other elements that it’s not so easy to learn with theory tuition and we can see that approach has worked really well for Madison.

“She is super keen and, on placement, she gets that opportunity to be in practice and meet the public. In a classroom, you’re trying to place the students in different scenarios, but the reality is that’s never the same as dealing with a real person.

“Away from how she communicates with patients, she’s also easily fitted in as part of the team. Our staff love working with her.”

That gushing praise for Madison is echoed by Theresa Ollerenshaw, who job shares with Melanie as Nimbuscare’s Clinical Manager and Educator.

“Madison has worked hard from the word go,” Theresa pointed out. “She very much wanted to get involved – she never wanted to be just sat there watching and, if she doesn’t know something, she asks.

“She’s blown us away with how amazing she has been and has been a really good asset to us. With the ECGs, she’s pretty much run her own clinic with supervision. 

“Even though we know she can do it, we have to have somebody in there watching where she’s putting the leads, as we would with our student nurses and we’ve seen her grow in confidence over time. She’s received a lot of clinical training but also acquired a lot of communication skills, which are at the forefront of nursing.

“Maidson has come on leaps and bounds with it. It’s not always easy to communicate with the public but she now has the confidence to do it very well.”

As well as providing a pathway to university, T Levels also offer an opportunity for students to audition their talents should an employment vacancy arise at their placement provider and Theresa added that she would love to work alongside Madison again at some point in the future following the completion of her degree.

“If we were on the lookout for a health care assistant and she had those competencies, we would absolutely be able to take Madison on,” Theresa said. “In terms of nursing, it’s not quite so straightforward.

“She would need a preceptorship first and we don’t have the capacity to do that. We can’t just take nurses straight out of Nursing School but, if she did do a preceptorship elsewhere, then we would be absolutely interested in bringing her back in that capacity if her nursing degree went really well, because we know Madison and what she can do.”

Both Theresa and Melanie agree that the Health T Level will also prove perfect preparation for any student that then wants to do a nursing course at university. 

“Madison will be going into uni at a really good stage, because she’s already there with a lot of the clinical practical skills that you need at the beginning that they’ll be teaching,” Theresa pointed out. “I’m sure she’ll be able to support fellow students.”

Melanie added: “The T Level is a similar approach to students who are doing nursing at university with the mixture of theory and practical work. It’s also good for students who find it difficult just listening to theory and looking at Power Points in a lecture hall.”

On the benefits of working with York College as joint T Level education providers, meanwhile, Theresa said: “The communication with College has been very good all the way through. 

“At the beginning, I was invited onto Campus for a tour to look at the Clinical Skills lab and other things, which was really helpful for me to have an understanding of what they’d be able to do practically when they come to us.

“The college has got all the different Resusci Annies and equipment set up in case scenarios. The facilities are fantastic and better than I’d expected.”

To learn more about our Health T Level course, please click here

For more information on our full T Level and Vocational course offering, visit here

Our next Open Event on Tuesday 1st April (5.30pm-7.30pm) will also offer an opportunity to find out more about our full course offering and a chance to meet tutors. You can register a place here