Work Experience Tasks

Understand the importance of work experience: It provides an opportunity to gain firsthand insight into the roles, responsibilities, and tasks of health and social care professions.
Attend induction: This primarily involves being introduced to the team, understanding the organisation’s policies, procedures and health and safety measures.
Observing professional behaviour: This is about acknowledging the importance of effective communication, respect, confidentiality, empathy, and maintaining professional boundaries with service users.
Learning to adhere with health and safety protocols: A significant part of your work experience will involve understanding and implementing crucial health and safety procedures. This could include the correct methods of patient lifting or infection control protocols.
Assist and support service users: When permissible and under supervision, you may get opportunities to directly assist service users. It could include serving meals, facilitating activities, or supporting personal care needs.
Assisting with administrative tasks: These might include duties such as answering phones, scheduling appointments, maintaining patient records, filing documentation, etc.
Reflect on your experiences: Reflecting on your work experience is a crucial part of the learning process in health and social care. This involves thinking critically about what you have observed, learned, achieved, and any areas for improvement or development.
Maintain a log of duties and experiences: This helps retain and reflect on acquired skills, tasks performed, interactions experienced, and lessons learned.
Obtain performance feedback: Always seek feedback on your performance from your supervisor and others you interacted with during your work experience. This can help identify areas to improve on.
Apply classroom knowledge in real-life situations: Utilise your work placement to apply theoretical concepts learned in health and social care in practical, real-life scenarios.
Build professional relationships: Networking with existing professionals can provide future opportunities, mentorship, and guidance.

Remember, the aim of work experience in health and social care is not just about the hands-on services you provide, but also about understanding the larger operations and challenges in the sector.