JILLIAN:
So when I left school, I went into the finance sector and eventually went into banking,I was a bank manager, I worked for building societies. It was during that time over the period of about 20 years that I realised I enjoyed helping people. I realised also the skills that acquired in finance could actually be carried forward into nursing and into the social care sector. It was a quite a short transition period between me wanting to come out of finance and going into the the care sector that I realised that that was actually the job for me
Over building up my skills and realising those skills could be transferred over into social care. So I joined the care sector as a healthcare assistant and what's equivalent of the NHS of a CSW and proceeded on to that and to become assistant practitioner as well.
Yeah it was actually something that was mentioned in the interview when I went for the interview for HCA. I had some experience of the company I worked for, as in members of the family worked for them so I knew the possibilities were there to progress.
It happened a lot quicker than I thought it would and but that was always in the back of my mind that I wanted to progress and go on to do my nursing.
So I joined Risedale group around four years ago as a HCA. Within a couple of months I was asked to apply for the assistant practitioner course which I did. That then started the following June so it was within 12 months I started the degree course to become an assistant practitioner. That was a course that took two years and and I qualified for that last September and I've now joined a nursing degree course which is a top-up course for a further two years. I've just finished my first year, which will be in August this year and then I've got another roughly 18 months to become a fully qualified nurse, so it's a very short period of time it's taken me. Within five years I'll be a qualified nurse.
So, once I've qualified, I do want to stay in the social care sector. I thoroughly enjoy working for the company I'm working for and and intend to stay with those and as part of my qualification to become a registered nurse, we do have placements within the NHS and so we do experience that but I do prefer the social care sector type of nursing.
