The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust has been recognised with the prestigious Engineering Apprenticeships: Employer Accreditation, becoming the first NHS Trust in the UK to be recognised as an exemplar employer for engineering apprenticeships.
Clinical Engineering apprentices at the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust learn as they earn while maintaining the Trusts’ medical devices and equipment to the highest possible standards.
Sagreev Chahal, Professional and Technical Development Manager, Medical Physics & Clinical Engineering comments: “As a team we have worked incredibly hard to create the best apprenticeship scheme possible. Gaining accreditation with the Engineering Apprenticeships: Employer Accreditation means that our apprenticeship training for our Clinical Engineers and our apprenticeship scheme itself has been recognised as being of best-in-class standard. The importance of this is that NHS staff, our partners and patients that come to our Trust can be confident that our devices have been maintained to the highest level by well trained and competent engineers.
“The training programme that we have developed for our Clinical Engineering apprentices is on par with the best providers in the UK and recognises us as the best in our field. The quality of our work is of paramount importance to us. Whether it is a thermometer, a ventilator or an Xray machine, we treat all technology with the same amount of respect, maximising up time as a result. This in turn ensures that our department makes a significant contribution to enable the Trust to provide the best care possible for patients”.
The Engineering Apprenticeships: Employer Accreditation recognises the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust as a best-in-class employer for engineering apprenticeships.
80% of the annual Accreditation process is based on experiential feedback from existing Engineering Apprentices at these companies. The other 20% is split between benchmarking analysis/ evidence of continuous improvement to the apprenticeship scheme and training provider feedback.
The Accreditation is backed by national manufacturing organisation Make UK and is achieved via the Engineering Apprenticeships: Best Practice Programme, a community benchmarking and best practice sharing initiative ran by Next Gen Makers.
Mr Chahal continues: “The Accreditation recognises that our apprentices are happy and content with the experience that we are giving them and they see us as an excellent employer. Hopefully the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust gaining this Accreditation will inspire more trusts to follow suit”.
As part of the Accreditation process and their ongoing involvement with Next Gen Makers’ Engineering Apprenticeships: Best Practice Programme, the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust will now be re-accredited annually whilst also committing to the benchmarking and continuous improvement of their apprenticeship scheme via peer-to-peer best practice sharing.
Mike Townsend, Business Development Manager for apprenticeships at BMet comments: “We know from our own research with employers, both large and small, that being able to knowledge share to develop best practice in terms of apprenticeship recruitment, experience and retention is a key priority for them, and we are proactively supporting our employers such as the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust through our partnership with Next Gen Makers and their Best Practice Programme & Accreditation”.