Choose Nursing in Clearing

I am Corinna Flaherty, I am Deputy Head of Nursing in Midwifery. Well first and foremost is the facilities we have. We have an outstanding huge clinical skills facilities which is state of the art. We have an intensive care unit, paediatric ward, GP centres where you've got GP office, you've got a community flat when looking after, say, postnatal care women. We have augmented and virtual reality. That's proved quite, you know, quite effective with students, particularly we have it when they can learn about the heart, say, where they visualise it and they can walk through it visually, pretty cool.

I think it's the students that we get, it isn't just one type of person that goes into nursing. They bring a lot of experience, whether it's in the NHS or our healthcare sector or life experience in the classroom.

It makes teaching them quite unique. They have challenges but I think they just kind of put their head down and get on with it and I think the academic staff support them quite well. They just develop quite a good healthcare community.

The support you get from the staff from day one, they always, always tell you if you need any support, come to us and when you do go to them, they're more than willing to help, and with my personal tutor and with my year head as well, they've been incredible.

So the support I get from the universities, top the rich. We teach students how to be a professional. We teach people how to safely use social media, how they represent a university, how they represent the nursing and Midwifery Council and nursing in itself. We teach them to turn up on time and hand in their assignments and wear their uniform with pride.

Placement was by the hospital for three whole years during my midwifery degree. I learned everything so I was able to actually provide direct patient care under supervision, work with different midwives, across different specialties, work with doctors and actually learn how to actually look after a patient and her baby.

It was really, really useful. I never thought I'd become the woman I am today without Middlesex. I think it has to be when students graduate. At graduation, what people don't see, they don't see the journey that student has gone through to get there.

Because life doesn't stop when you come into higher education, it continues. We see that and I think Middlesex, collectively together with all of our support services, helps those students progress. So that's why graduation, we're sitting there going, yes, you did it because actually they've got through it and it's huge.