Health Careers
Health Careers, run by Health Education England, offers careers information and advice for those wanting to make a difference with a career in health through a range of channels including a website, helpline and a suite of careers literature and other resources. It also runs the Step into the NHS website and annual national schools competition.
Make a difference with a career in health!
Did you know there are around 350 roles to choose from in health?
You’d be surprised how many of them don’t require a degree, aren’t directly patient-facing, or aren’t clinical or hands on.
Health Careers supports careers advisers, NHS organisations, schools and colleges with a range of resources and tools, such as a career mapper, videos, and a course finder to help you and your students with making crucial career choices.
Explore the roles in health to find out which career best matches your students’ skills, qualifications and interests.
For a more comprehensive quiz, why not try our new Find your health career tool on the main Health Careers website with more than 100 questions? Your students and clients can save their results to a Health Careers account.
Information for careers advisers and teachers
On the Health Careers website, you’ll find our careers advisers and teachers section which includes:
Order copies of our eye-catching postcards and booklet to inspire people in to an NHS career! Give us a call on 0345 60 60 655 or email advice@healthcareers.nhs.uk
Don’t forget to register with the Health Careers website and sign up to the mailing lists to keep up to date with the latest career developments in health.
Meeting The Gatsby Benchmarks
Your life, real life https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/career-planning/career-advisers-and-teachers/teaching-resources/real-life-your-life-teaching-resources is an online suite of resources, activities and supporting materials for key stage 4 learners. They can be delivered as part of work in citizenship, PSHE, English and drama. This suite, along with our Patient journeys https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/career-planning/career-advisers-and-teachers/teaching-resources/patient-journey-toolkit-teachers (which show which staff a patient will typically come into contact with during their ‘journey’) can help support you in Benchmark 1 (a stable careers programme).
Our Infographics https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/career-planning/resources contain bite size information with facts and figures covering a range of topics (such as apprenticeships in the NHS) and career areas (eg learning disability nursing, careers in the psychological therapies, podiatry, careers in healthcare science). Meanwhile on the Health Careers website https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles, you can find labour market information about individual clinical roles. This can help you meet Benchmark 2 (learning from career and labour market information).
Benchmark 3 relates to addressing the needs of each student and the Career mapper https://www.stepintothenhs.nhs.uk/take-the-test on our Step into the NHS website https://www.stepintothenhs.nhs.uk/ (aimed specifically at 14-19 year olds) can help individual students generate career suggestions for them to consider, based on their answers to 30 questions.
For a more comprehensive quiz, why not try our new Find your health career https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/career-planning/career-tools tool on the main Health Careers website with more than 100 questions? Your students and clients can save their results to a Health Careers account.
On our Health Careers website, you can compare up to three roles side-by-side using our Compare roles https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/compare-roles tool – especially useful if, for example, you’re unclear what the differences are between a psychotherapist, a psychiatrist and a psychologist!
You can search for approved clinical courses that lead to professional registration using our course finder https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/career-planning/course-finder.
When it comes to Benchmark 5 (encounters with employers and employees), there is a plethora of resources on offer.
Many staff in the health sector volunteer to provide support in primary and secondary schools through Inspiring the future https://www.inspiringthefuture.org/. This might include help with mock interviews, talks about their role, mentoring, subject talks, CV workshops or speed networking, for example. You’ll also find a number of health sector scientists and engineers are STEM ambassadors https://www.stem.org.uk/stem-ambassadors, providing a real insight to what they do on a day to day basis.
Our annual schools competition https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/career-planning/career-advisers-and-teachers/teaching-resources/step-nhs-secondary-schools for students in Years 8 and 9 is now in its 10th year and is a great opportunity for students to research any one career in the health sector and then create an advert to promote that career to their peers.
In 2018, we also launched our resources for primary school students https://www.stepintothenhs.nhs.uk/primary, after a successful pilot phase back in January.
You’ll always find us at the Big Bang Science Fair https://www.thebigbangfair.co.uk/, World Skills UK https://www.worldskillsuk.org/ and What Career Live https://www.whatcareerlive.co.uk/ events, supported by local health sector staff who share their passion for what they do and engage with students through practical learning activities.
Our toolkit for work experience coordinators, Finding work experience in the NHS https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/career-planning/career-advisers-and-teachers/work-experience-toolkit gives practical hints and tips about how to approach NHS organisations for work experience placements for their students. This is especially relevant to Benchmark 6 (experiences of workplaces).
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