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Jo: I had surgery on my spine and I had frequent X-rays at Southampton General. I remember being sat in the waiting room one day and seeing a poster that said, ‘Could you be a radiographer?’ It's been one of the best decisions I've made for myself.

Tom Campbell-Adams: Here at the ´óÏó´«Ã½, the Diagnostic Radiography and Medical Imaging Course is a three year course which guarantees progression to a registration with the Healthcare Professions Council as a diagnostic radiographer. 

Laura Knight: We are at the forefront of diagnosing patients in our clinical practice and we need to have a really good sound knowledge of anatomy, physiology and pathology as well.
Our students spend about half their time in lectures, tutorials, group work and clinical simulation here on campus, and they spend half of their academic year out on placement, getting that really rich, practical experience. 

Tom Campbell-Adams: We have a range of simulation facilities here at the ´óÏó´«Ã½. We have our mobile X-ray unit and we can undertake simulation both just as a course on our own and also in professional simulation alongside our partners in nursing and other courses as well.

We have an image intensifier C-arm where we can simulate theatre practice as well. And then over in our St Michael's building across the road, we have a fully functional clinical X-ray room, which we can use to simulate all aspects of radiographic practice within the department.

Kye: Working in the simulation suite before placements really helps because initially you have no confidence in what you're doing. You have no idea what to expect. But once you get to the full list of equipment, you understand what it will be like and it makes more sense and it falls into place. 

Jo: Having been on placement, you get to know managers, you get to know people in the departments. It's quite nice going into an interview knowing that you're going to be interviewed by someone you've kind of already built a rapport with.

Theo: Thankfully, because of my placements and the placement sites that ´óÏó´«Ã½ have opened, it gives me lots of different opportunities with different kinds of hospitals like trauma centres or community and smaller hospitals to have that range of experience. Hopefully I can take it across the country.

What is great about this course is the amount of support you have, whether you need some legal advice from law students, whether you just need some emotional support from your tutors, there will always be somebody that can point you in the right direction. 

Tom Campbell-Adams: There's always going to be a variety of new experiences. I think that makes it a really, really nice opportunity.

Jo: Whilst it's very specific to X-ray, it's also quite transferable to any other department. 

Kye: Anyone who wants to get into radiography and study at the University ´óÏó´«Ã½, I would say to them that yes, be prepared. It's a long journey and if you're passionate about it, then it’s definitely the right thing to do.

Hazel

The simulation centre is as close as you can get to an actual ward. It's just a safe place to practice your skills that enable you to become the best you can be at what you want to do.

Laura Knight

SimEx is a simulated mass casualty event. It takes place all over the greater ´óÏó´«Ã½ area, with multiple exercises going on with multiple students involved and multiple agencies as well and it just allows not only hospital environments, but also disaster response environments to be able to test their mass casualty processes and protocols to make sure that we deal with it in the best way that we possibly can.

Sarah Herbert

The event today was based on a traffic accident. We've got actors playing the parts of patients, various injuries, some relatively minor, up to some pretty serious stuff and unfortunately, a few people that didn't make it.

Laura Knight

Last year we did one day full of adult casualties. This year, we've doubled the days up and we've added a paediatric element in which allows QA and our students to be able to prepare themselves if the worst ever happened and we did have a lot of children needing attention medically at any one time.

Melanie Tanner

It's a really rare opportunity to be involved in something that's in such big scale, as in SimEx. The students, of course, do have placements. They have to do 2300 hours, be put on the register to be a nurse. But to get this experience with this mass casualty situation would be very, very rare for them.

Laura Knight

A lot of the time, students have to take a bit of a backseat role when stuff like this comes in during clinical placements. Being able to do it in a controlled environment allows the students to be able to practice their skills that they're going to have to be doing when they qualify and when they come across a major incident in real life.

Melanie Tanner

By seeing this and working together with the QA team here now, they are getting such valuable learning experience and if they ever have to deal with this in the future, it will allow them to be more confident and competent practitioners.

Makaylia

I believe that getting this experience as a student opens my eyes to what actually happens in the real world. I feel like I've had the experience where I can implement those skills into anything that I come across.

Hazel

There are so many different aspects of the multidisciplinary team within the hospital setting and being able to understand each other's roles and communicate with each other and work together is what optimises patient outcomes.

Makaylia

This will help me in my future career because of all the experience that I've gained and an insight of what it's like to work with different types of teams, for example, doctors, consultants and other nurses. It's good for communication and teamwork.
 

Melanie Tanner

20 of my student nurses I've directed up to Tipner. They're going to be involved in a humanitarian exercise and they will be working with the crisis and management team. The idea is by putting student nurses in those roles is they get to see what it's like to be on the other side, to feel vulnerable, to feel empathy for that person in that situation.

Debbi Atkinson

It's about recognising the roles of others, seeing the impacts that they can have and I think its just about taking those transferable skills that our students have and putting it into a different situation.

Steve Searby

Nursing isn't a traditional, ward based approach. Some of the students here could go on and work for international aid agencies. It is really important that they have an awareness of the kind of pressures that they could be involved in.

Phil Crook

There's negotiations that have to be undertaken with local important people. There's interviews with the media to show off their organisation and develop relationships. They face a series of other challenges, such as passing checkpoints and to access and assess a particular location as to its suitability to develop into a refugee camp or camp for internally displaced people. The better we can make that experience now, the better equipped they'll be when they go into that world in the future.

SimEx allows us to offer an exercise environment to other organisations, external to the university such as voluntary organisations, sometimes local authority, emergency responders, United Nations organisations, civil protection organisations from around the world and then sat behind all of that, because we're a university, there's a huge amount of research that goes on.

Melanie Tanner

This experience will really help the students in their future careers. It will really make them feel safe, confident and competent going forward. If it becomes a reality, which we do have major casualty incidents, then they will feel more confident as a team all together to work together and hopefully get a better outcome for everyone in our community.