Leeds Beckett University celebrating its nursing staff and students to mark International Nurses Day

The university offers a number of courses in nursing including Adult Nursing and Mental Health Nursing.

As part of their course students take part in several placements to help them experience and understand the realities that nursing involves preparing them for their future workplace.

Ada Okoye is a second year Adult Nursing student.

She explains why she wants to be a nurse: “I chose nursing because I love helping people.

"I see nursing as not just a job, but as a vocation because it gives me the opportunity to make a positive difference in the life of others. I love helping people so that’s why I chose nursing.”

Zoe Lambert is a Senior Lecturer in Adult Nursing with over 20 years’ experience in nursing.

She has worked in head and neck surgery, oncology, critical care and general and neurological ICU.

She says it’s great seeing how enthusiastic her students are: “I find it incredibly rewarding teaching nurses of the future, it’s fun. They come to the programme with a lot of energy, a lot of ideas and it’s nice to see enthusiasm for healthcare. It’s a really great job. It’s nice to work with people who have got an enthusiasm for the job as well.

“I think nursing is important to everybody. It touches everybody’s lives whether you are ill or you’re well. You’ll come across nursing staff who bring children into the world, give vaccinations, school nurses and health visitors. At some point in your life, you will come across and need a nurse.”

Rachel Attricki is a second year Adult Nursing student from Qatar.

Her first placement was in a covid ward which she says was rewarding: “The thought of having to go to the hospital during the pandemic and hold people while they actually took their last breath as a student nurse gave me a bit of satisfaction – at least if I couldn’t help them survive I did help them in their last moment, and that is what actually kept me going. It gave me a purpose even as a student nurse being a frontliner.”

As well as teaching nursing at Leeds Beckett, Zoe studied at the university too: “I think it’s a great place to study nursing, I did my training here. We’ve got great facilities. We’ve got the new Clinical Skills Suite being built. You’ve got a great team of lecturing staff, of academic staff – we’ve got expertise from a lot of areas from critical care to community care, school nursing – so there’s a lot of expertise within the team.

“We’re really fortunate in Leeds that we work with the Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust and the Leeds and York Partnership for Mental Health Services, and within those trusts you’ve got lots of different specialist areas and lots of expertise. At LGI you’ve got the trauma unit, the neurological specialist unit, cardiological specialist services - so as a student on placement in Leeds you’re exposed to an amazing array of specialities and the best in healthcare, so you’re working with the best consultants, the best nursing teams - so it’s a really great place to learn.”

Rachel has gained some amazing experience on her placements so far: “I’ve been on about eight placements in total. I’ve been to older adults with mental health, I’ve been to geriatric, I’ve been to head and neck surgery, I’ve been to colorectal and renal transplant – I’ve seen a transplant been done, I’ve been into elective orthopaedic surgery – I’ve seen a hip replacement. I’ve seen a lot.”

Ada has found the placements and the teaching they receive work well together: “They give me the opportunity to go into practice placements and see that the models being used at Leeds Beckett reflect the work that I see in my practice placements, for example, we study the anatomy and physiology of the body and when you go into practice placement you see most of these things in practice.”

To find out more about nursing opportunities at Leeds Beckett University visit their website.