Wednesday 23 November marks Clinical Support Worker Celebration Day! Clinical Support Workers (CSWs) are highly valued members of staff at CWP and contribute a lot of work to patient care.
CSWs assist other healthcare professionals in the delivery of patient care, and often help with preparing patients, updating their records and explaining their treatments. The tasks completed by CSWs enable our departments to run effectively and safely.
To shine a spotlight on the amazing work our CSWs do, and the contribution they make to nursing, health and social care, we have compiled some informative and interesting videos and stories below.
Firstly, you can view a message from Gary Flockhart, CWP's Director of Nursing, Therapies and Patient Partnership below.
Careers as a CSW
To learn more about some some of our CSWs and their career journeys, read Nigel Miskell's story below. Nigel talks about how being a CSW helped him to progress his career, and why CSWs are so important.
I am Nigel Miskell, and I am the Trust’s Clinical Education Manager for Physical Health and the Resuscitation Lead. I have been in post for 8.5 years now and am responsible for the education requirements for both Physical Health and Resuscitation.
Summary of career Journey
I started as a Health Care Assistant in a Care home in 1988 and moved into the NHS in 1992 as a Health Care Assistant on an elderly medical ward and on the nurse bank so I have worked on many different wards.
In 1995 I gained employment in Accident and Emergency as an Emergency Care Assistant to support the trained staff clinically. I learnt many skills in the 5 years I was employed there.
In 2000, I was successful in gaining a secondment to Nurse training opportunity and commenced my nurse training in October 2000.
In 2003, I qualified as a Registered General Nurse and gained employment back in A&E as a staff nurse and spent 6 years as a band 5 staff nurse and was trained in advanced trauma nursing / nurse triage, advanced Paediatric Life support and Advanced Life support.
In 2009/10 I was successful at interview for a band 6 shift leader position and continued as a shift leader whilst I was on duty and managed my own team of Band 5 nurses and clinical support workers.
In 2014 I was successful at interview for my current role at CWP.
What is it like to be a CSW?
I absolutely loved my time as a CSW / HCA as it gave me the experience I needed to go on and become an effective trained nurse, I have always advocated that to be a good effective staff nurse you need to have the grounding of being a CSW first, as you then have the framework you will need to build on to be a good, knowledgeable staff nurse. I fully support any CSW / nursing associate that wants to commence their nurse training and build on their professional future.
What are the importance of clinical support workers to CWP?
I strongly believe that as a staff nurse and Clinical trainer we would not be able to effectively do our jobs without an effective CSW team. CSW’s are the backbones of CWP and should be nurtured and encouraged to learn as much as possible to support their individual teams and patients. We have some of the best CSW’s I have ever worked with at CWP, their compassion, encouragement, commitment and eagerness to learn new skills is what drives me to support them in any way I can, we are very lucky to have them with us at CWP and it is a privilege to be able to support CSW’s in any way I can.
You can also watch a video about career pathways within nursing, by our Vocational Learning team at CWP.
