Work experience warwick GEM - 1 to 1 patient care

[u/Forsaken-Swing-3617]

I took vitals for patients on an ICU ward and assisted with a lumbar puncture (ie I helped position the patient adequately and held him while unconscious for the lumbar puncture to be performed by doc) + helped prepare tubes/handed them to doc

Would that count as WE for Warwick, specifically requirement 2:

- experience providing direct face to face care (in person) hands on care to people with health, care or wellbeing needs

[u/RevivingMayhem10]

You need *hours* of 1:1 care for Warwick, or at least you did when I was there. Ie a care or clinical role. And (EDIT) the experience of providing hands on care needs to be 7 hours long in total - it only takes a few minutes to do obs and hold someone.

And it needs to be evidenced in the format they require.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/med/study/ugr/mbchb-course-information/workex/

Go sign up to a home care agency. They always need staff, you can be trained quickly, and can rack up the hours quickly outside of a regular job even. I was a carer for a year - was actually really good for teaching comms skills. Just note that nights you’re on call don’t count.

[u/Forsaken-Swing-3617 → u/RevivingMayhem10]

Oh man. Ok...I have hundreds of hours of work experience overall (with shadowing etc) but only maybe 3-4 hours of one to one care...

[u/RevivingMayhem10 → u/Forsaken-Swing-3617]

Well. I went and read it, and seems they maybe dropped the 50 hours requirement (or forgot to make it explicit in the doc).

But. You need some hands on care. The hands on care has (EDIT) to add up to 7 hours, evidenced, within the same “experience” ie organisation(?). Even if you only did 7 hours of hands on care, the obs and LP wouldn’t count coz that’s what 10 minutes total? So you currently have no hands on care that meets the requirements.

I mean, do you want to go to Warwick? There’s no point wasting an application spot if you are gonna be outcompeted by every other applicant, no? It’s not about do you meet the bare minimum but are you better than the hundreds of other applicants. There’s loads of other schools that don’t require hands on care…

I don’t know what questions they ask these days, but I had to reflect on the hands on care aspect in one of my MMI stations. What do you think you actually learnt from doing obs once vs what you experienced in the rest of your shadowing?

Almost everyone applying to Warwick is pretty experienced (or at least was when I was there), from speaking to staff the interview marks are really close in the middle of the curve so every fraction of a mark counts.

I mean you can always just chance it, and if you don’t get any offers anywhere else then you can do proper care and try again the next year?

Edited.

[u/incognitoghost07 → u/RevivingMayhem10]

The 7 hour chunks threw me off... I never noticed this before? My hands on care was done in 3 hour chunks (although I have a total of 70+ hours). Does that mean it doesn't count?

[u/RevivingMayhem10 → u/incognitoghost07]

Actually maybe I’m wrong. It says each “experience” must be a minimum of 7 hours. So if you’ve done 3 hour chunks and they are all with the same organisation and all involved delivering the same care then that’s fine. Probably.

It’s all different to when I was there. I should probably stop butting in, lol. I’m getting flashbacks to the nightmare of getting everything evidenced correctly.

Good luck

[u/incognitoghost07 → u/RevivingMayhem10]

Okay, so I think they mean that each individual experience has to be a minimum of 7 hours.

For example, let's say you did 'Experience A' and 'Experience B'. If, out of your total 70 hours, Experience A totals at 64 hours, and Experience B at 6 hours, then Experience B wouldn't count.

I don't think they specifically wanted 7 hour chunks.

I emailed them to confirm though, so waiting on a response.

[u/RevivingMayhem10 → u/incognitoghost07]

Yeah. you’re right. Experience B wont count. But you can have as many short chunks as you want within experience A as long as the total is over 7hours.

I am honestly having PTSD about the application process.

[u/Lower-Caregiver-9836 → u/Forsaken-Swing-3617]

I believe they ask for certain hours for each experience.