Background Following numerous requests for work experience at the hospice to enable students to gain entry to university healthcare courses, we created a week to facilitate this in a way manageable for the hospice.

Aims Support students to access courses in medicine, nursing and healthcare by facilitating relevant experience, particularly those who may struggle otherwise to secure relevant experience. Educate future generations of healthcare professionals about palliative care and open up an area of healthcare for consideration in their future careers.

Method We created an annual week-long programme to offer 20 students the chance to participate in a variety of experiences. The programme consists of interactive healthcare training by our Education team, patient-facing hands-on experience shadowing on our Inpatient Service, Q&A sessions with our staff and collaborative sessions with local universities. We receive over 120 applications each year following linking with all local schools, therefore we go through a selection process to select 20 students.

Results Students reported:

• Success in securing university places, using the experience to enhance their application and enrich their interview.

• Greater understanding of what palliative care is.

• Consideration of palliative care as a specialism and knowledge of the career path.

• Change in perspective of what healthcare can be.

• Better equipped to deal with the death of patients in all areas of healthcare.

Organisation’s results:

• A unique insight into the future workforce.

• Boost in morale and passion from staff.

• Increase in volunteers and fundraisers.

• Education of younger generations in our area about hospices.

Conclusion The experience has proven to be successful in a multitude of ways and inspired a future generation of healthcare professionals to consider palliative care as a career. We hope other hospices may consider running similar weeks to help create a future workforce.