Many people dressed up as a doctor or nurse as a child, but if you're all grown up and still dream of a career in healthcare, then the National Health Service has some great opportunities.
It employs more than 1.5 million workers, making it the UK’s largest employer – and the fourth largest in the whole world, behind only the Chinese army, the Indian Railway and Wal-Mart.
On average there are 10,000 jobs available in the NHS at any one time – and it’s not just healthcare jobs that the NHS offers – with more than 350 different career opportunities available, ranging from scientists to gardeners, IT specialists to radiographers.
In-job training
No matter what jobs you’ve done in the past, you'll have skills that the NHS can use. And if you don’t want to do a full-time degree or diploma, but want to go into healthcare, you can be retrained as you work to do a range of different jobs.
For example, clinical support staff assist healthcare professionals, sometimes working alongside them. You might be based in a lab helping to diagnose conditions, working in a hospital or clinic, or visiting patients’ homes to help with treatment or provide general care.
You can be employed as a healthcare assistant or auxiliary nurse without qualifications, and can work towards an NVQ in Care up to level 3. You can work your way up to a position as a nurse from an unqualified support role by training for a registered nursing degree or diploma.
However, if you want to go straight into nursing or midwifery from university, you can usually get a bursary and funding from the NHS.
Private healthcare jobs
There are also a huge number of private sector healthcare jobs available in the UK. Four of the largest independent healthcare organisations in the country are Bupa, Spire Healthcare, BMI Healthcare and Nuffield Health Hospitals.
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