Work Experience

At the Countess of Chester Hospital, we are committed to offering work experience placements to support students into future NHS careers. These placements help students gain insight into the roles available in the NHS, which can support their studies or career aspirations. If you are looking at a career change into health, then we can help with this also.

Undertaking a work experience placement, has many benefits:

Providing insight into a variety of NHS careers
Meet staff and discuss their career journeys
Develop new transferable skills
Gain valuable experience within your preferred department
Practical skills
Gain an insight into the world of work

Please note, you must reside in Cheshire West and Flintshire to apply for any of our work experience programmes and if you are applying for clinical work experience you must also complete an Occupational Health form and provide a copy of your immunisations.

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Work Experience Programmes

Prospective Medical Students Course - If you would like to apply to shadow a doctor for work experience, you must be 17 or older and be considering going to medical school in the future. Our Prospective Medical Students Course will run three times per year.

Countess Career Work Experience Placements - Applications are open all year round for Countess Career Placements for a maximum of one week work experience in a wide range of areas in the hospital – you need to be 16 to apply (17 for some areas).

Year 10 Work Experience Week -This is a bespoke programme open to year 10 students and take place for a week in July each year. The aim of the programme is to introduce the students to hospital life and the 350 different careers on offer in the NHS.

Pharmacy Work Experience - If you are hoping to gain experience in Pharmacy, please note, this is only considered for students who are planning to study Pharmacy at university, on a Student Technician course or Technical Officer Course.

Health T-Level - We offer longer term placements to students studying Health as a T-Level and Health and Social Care students – please get in touch to find out more.

How to Apply

To apply please email Lisa Haslam at coch.workexperience@nhs.net for the application forms required.

Hear from some of our past students:

“I really enjoyed my time at the hospital and found it to be a valuable experience. The doctors and MDTs were very approachable and took the time to answer my questions, which allowed me to gain insight into how they interact with patients and then I was able to reflect on what I saw. Overall, I am grateful for the opportunity to have done work experience with you and the experience has motivated me to pursue a career in the medical field and I hope to have more opportunities like this in the future.”

“The admin team provided me with an excellent work atmosphere and a great learning environment, I am very thankful for my opportunity to undertake my placement there and would recommend this experience to anyone interested in working within the administrative field.”

“It helped me to decide on the career I would like”.

“Absolutely wonderful - the staff were very friendly and keen to show me the inner workings of the hospital and answer my questions”.

Accreditation

We have received the Gold Standard for our work experience provision. This is a national accreditation awarded by NHS England which provides external quality assurance for high quality work experience programmes.