We are 2nd year Midwifery students asking for your support in helping all healthcare students to be given the decision of opting into placement in the pandemic.

University healthcare student have been highly affected by Covid guidelines, firstly by having to self teach at home and continuously being pulled from practical placements. A lot of healthcare degrees require a number of hours to be completed in practice to be able to complete their courses and missed hours from the previous lockdown have now stacked up. Students have been able to continue back in practice since September and it has been ‘Safe’ for us to work through the current National lockdown.
In spite of this, Health Education England still feel the need to continue to pull students from placement. We have now been informed that once again we will be pulled from practice on 9th December to allow time to isolate before returning home for Christmas. Despite this, Students haven’t been given the chance to confirm whether they are going home or not as well as considering those who are mature students/live at home and will not need to travel home. Students also have jobs along side university and will need to work over christmas, therefore cannot travel home in the time period given.

It is also unknown at this time whether students will also need to isolate for 2 weeks before returning back into practice in January, meaning that ALL students will potentially miss a further 4 weeks of placement hours.

We would like the decision of being out on placement to be our choice.
We should be able to assess if we feel vulnerable or whether we feel well protected by our placement areas. We do not want to solely pass our courses, we want to feel competent going into our new careers.
                    
                       

           “We are the future of the NHS”