Children’s CRF honoured for “incredibly positive” student placement feedback

The NIHR / Wellcome Trust Manchester Children’s Clinical Research Facility (CRF) has been honoured after students gave “incredibly positive” feedback about practice placements on the ward.

Members of staff at the Children’s CRF have been presented with an Exceptional Placement Award. The scheme aims to commemorate the commitment of staff to ensure students have a quality, safe, educational and enjoyable time whilst undertaking practice placements across Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CMFT). The Children’s CRF offers placement opportunities for students in nursing, medicine and play specialist roles.

Patricia Ormrod, Practice Education Facilitator at CMFT, presented staff with a certificate on Tuesday 7th July, to celebrate and showcase their efforts.

Joanne Guest, Paediatric Nurse Manager and Lauren Lindley, Senior Clinical Research Nurse and Student Link Nurse at the Children’s CRF were on hand to accept the award on behalf of their colleagues. They were joined by University of Manchester nursing student, Saminder Sidhu, who is currently on placement at the facility.

Patricia said: “I am delighted to present staff with this very well deserved accolade. We want to celebrate the hard work and loyalty of staff in making sure that students get the most out of their practice placements here at CMFT. We have received so many incredibly positive comments from students in their placement evaluation forms following their experiences at the Children’s CRF.”

Lauren commented: “We only started taking on student placement roles here at the Children’s CRF around three years ago and so we are very happy and shocked to have received this award. We have really worked hard to make sure that students have a great time here at the facility; we have asked for feedback and listened to opinions to guarantee that we can give students the best possible learning experience.”

Joanne added: “It is important to us to spread the word about clinical research being undertaken here at CMFT, and in the NHS as a whole. We find that not many students know about research, and so it is about informing them of the huge amount of research that is undertaken here daily.

We are delighted as we now find that more and more students want to come and have a practice placement with us here and find out more about what we do. Our current nursing student, Saminder requested to undertake her elective placement here after hearing such encouraging feedback from her friends and fellow students, and that in itself is a huge honour for us.