What’s your name and where do you come from?

We’re constantly on the lookout for ambitious, passionate and talented individuals to join us. It offers us the opportunity to engage with future talent, to benefit from students’ creativity (keeping our ideas fresh) and gives them invaluable, hands-on skills to take into their future careers.

Last week, four students joined our digital team on a year-long placement. We’ll let them introduce themselves to you. Please welcome Abigail…

Hi, I'm Abigail Morley. I go to Northumbria University and I'm from Newcastle.

What position will you be doing at the NHSBSA?

Content design.

Describe your first day in three words.

Very warm welcome!

What did you get up to in your first week?

I went to a variety of meetings; to meet new colleagues and get to grips with what the NHSBSA ‘does’. I also spent a lot of this time reading about the project I’ll be working on; Low Income Scheme (LIS).

Has anything surprised you?

That I look forward to every day and shockingly don’t mind the early mornings! This is most definitely due to the fact that I’m getting involved in seriously interesting work and enjoying the friendly and open atmosphere.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I would already like to thank everyone for making sure I feel so welcome and not ashamed if there are things I don’t understand. It makes learning, and enjoying the work effortless despite the challenges and I can’t wait for what my time here at placement brings.

 

I’m Natasha Dodds. I study Marketing Management at Northumbria University.

What position will you be doing at the NHSBSA?

My role for the year is a user researcher.

Describe your first day in three words.

Exciting, interesting and informative.

What did you get up to in your first week?

It was mainly getting to know my role and what it entailed. I learnt about the structure and reasoning of agile ways of working and the different services the NHSBSA provide – a lot! From Help with Health Costs and prescription processing to the call centre.

What’s been the biggest challenge, and how did you overcome it?

Understanding the jargon! I have read training documents and blogs, as well as making a mini ‘dictionary’ of key words and acronyms. I’ve learnt that no question is a silly question; so I’ll be keeping that up.

My name is Ashleigh Hoskins and I am from Chester-Le-Street in County Durham. I am currently studying International Business Management at Northumbria University.

What position will you be doing at the NHSBSA?

I’ll be learning how to become a delivery manager and excited that it will allow me to develop personally but also achieve my future goals in not only university, but my career.

Describe your first day in three words.

Enlightening, motivating and exciting.

What did you get up to in your first week?

The usual inductions and training (such as health and safety) plus the chance to meet all the people I will be working with over the next year. I also got started on my first project within the digital team (exciting); Maternity Exemption (MatEx).

What do you find most interesting and what is Maternity Exemption?

MatEx is a project which gives exemption from health costs for women during pregnancy and a year after childbirth. We’ve been working on digitising this process, placing the applications online for healthcare professionals to complete on behalf of their patients. With them always being extremely busy, I like to know that I am part of the team working to make their experience with our services quicker and easier.

Please contact NHSBSA.digital@nhs.net if you have any questions or would like to learn more.