Vacancies
Providing fulfilling and informative work experience opportunities
We provide work experience placements for students who are in full-time education and are aged 15 - 18 years old. Placements are provided in all appropriate clinical and non-clinical areas to provide a broad range of work based placement opportunities.
We’re committed to supporting fulfilling, informative and structured 5 day work experience opportunities for young people within the Trust's catchment area of County Durham. We recognise that work experience placements offer a chance for students to gain valuable insight and knowledge that can inform the decisions they make about their future studies and career choices.
Who can access our work experience programme?
Our work experience placements are open to:
- Students who are aged between 15 to 18 years old
- Students who are in full-time education or training
- Where applicable, students with special educational needs (SEN) aged from 15 up to 21 years old, can apply for a work experience placement
Our work experience placements are not open to University students or students over the age of 18 years old, including those who are looking for work place experience prior to a change of career.
How to request a work experience placement
To apply for a work experience placement, you will need to provide us with some information about yourself and also tell us about the career you are interested in, why it appeals to you and what you expect to get out of a work placement at CDDFT.
Work experience requests are managed through the Learning and Development administration team who receive a high volume of enquiries and requests, so it may take some time for them to process your application and get back to you - please be patient.
The Learning and Development administration team try to arrange placements for as many students as possible, but cannot guarantee that they will be able to arrange a placement for every student who submits an application.
The areas and departments unable to offer work experience placements
Understandably, we are unable to offer work experience placements in some areas. This is either due to the sensitive nature of the work carried out, or due to the potential psychological or physical risk to students. The below areas are restricted and are unable to facilitate work experience placements:
- Accident and Emergency
- Contraception and Sexual Health Services
- Coronary Care Unit
- Family Planning
- Genito-Urinary Medicine
- Intensive Care Unit
- Macmillan Services
- Mortuary
- Mental Health
- Paediatrics, including Community Dental
- Palliative Care Services
- Maternity, SCBU
- Safeguarding Children / Child Protection
- Surgical (including procedures in podiatry and dental)
- Theatres (including GI Endoscopy, Day Surgery and Recovery)
- Urgent Care Centres
Other useful information
We can only consider requests for work experience placements that have been submitted with all of the relevant information. Please apply between 10 to 16 weeks before the proposed start date of the placement - unfortunately we cannot accept applications at more than 16 weeks as supervising staff may move to other wards or departments before the placement starts. It takes about 10 weeks to process each work experience application - we are therefore unable to accept applications that are submitted less than 10 weeks before the proposed start date of the placement. Please also note that placement applications cannot be made by contacting individual members of CDDFT staff, individual wards or departments or by submitting requests by letter, over the phone, in person or by sending in your CV.
