The Summer School programme run by the project to create the new University Hospital Monklands was bigger than ever this year.

The Monklands Replacement Project (MRP) welcomed pupils from across North and South Lanarkshire for two schools last month – one on construction and the other on clinical care – to learn about what’s involved in working in these careers.

Before that, there was a new off-site version of Summer School for students unable to attend the events hosted at University Hospital Monklands. It was held at St Philip’s School in Airdrie and focused on how safe patient care is supported by facilities management, which includes various NHS Lanarkshire jobs such as building maintenance, domestic services and estates management.

The MRP entered a new reset and redesign phase in June but the project’s commitment to Community Benefits remains unchanged. Its Summer Schools are a flagship example of Community Benefits,  which promotes community wealth building through opportunities for career education and work experience.

“We had over 60 S4 to S6 pupils across the three Summer Schools, which was fantastic. “It’s a really educational, inspiring and fun experience and, as ever, the young people were engaged, bright, willing to learn and really enthusiastic about hearing from our professionals and finding out about careers that were new to many of them. “They gave a presentation to us at the end, showing their level of knowledge and how their confidence grew over the week.”

David Tacey, Currie & Brown Apprentice Project Manager, said:

“We discussed project management, quantity surveying, cost consulting and how to manage costs on a project while assessing risks. Our building surveying team spoke about how to manage the building’s physical risks and how infrastucture looks, reacts and ‘breathes’.”

“The purpose was to follow that patient and learn which clinicians needed to be involved. “I delivered the first class and the students were fantastic. They had loads of questions for me and they really wanted to learn. “A lot of them already had ambitions to work in healthcare. What was really interesting to see in their final presentations was that everything we’d taught them and all the clinicians they’d met had triggered something in them to think that the clinical roles they’d learned about could be a career option.”

“Since I may be looking for a career in construction it appealed to me to get some experience. The week was great. We started with project managers, moving to quantity surveyors and then my personal favourite day was actually going on site. We saw the project, the people in the offices, the day-to-day works, everything that it takes to build this massive hospital.”

“I found it quite fun, especially the fact that we had to get on site and we could see around it. I would say it’s definitely worthwhile – you learn a lot about how these things are actually built and you also learn about communication.”

“It was really interesting to hear from the healthcare staff and especially the speech and language therapists because we all found out that they specialise in a patient being able to swallow after a stroke alongside the communication aspect, which most of us didn’t actually know.”

“I enjoyed the practical activities with orthoptics (specialised eye care) and the physiotherapists. We learned about electrotherapy (using electrical energy to stimulate nerves, muscles and tissues) as well and I thought that was quite interesting – it was something I’d never seen before. And just getting an insight into the day-to-day lives of the clinicians – I thought it was quite cool.”