My work experience week at Healthwatch - Rawnaq

Monday:

On my first day at Healthwatch, I was first introduced to Agne and Jenny, who explained to me what Healthwatch is and what I can expect to do throughout the week. Afterwards, I was given a tour of the place and joined in on the daily morning catch up that takes place in the office. During the catch-up, the office staff introduced themselves to me, explained their role in Lifeline projects, and detailed their tasks for the day.

To fully understand the work that Healthwatch does, I read some of the annual reports that are up on the website which provides information about the projects they have effectively completed during the year. Once I had finished reading the reports, I accompanied Agne to her presentation at Laburnum Medical Centre, where she clearly and effectively explained Healthwatch to the GP staff. Having taken my lunch break, I then spent the rest of the day writing a blog concerning a health issue.

Tuesday:

On Tuesday, the first task of the day was to type up a summary of the presentation I had gone along with the day before and join the catch-up. I met Peter and he spoke to me about the project that he’s currently working on, and he asked me if I could help him by doing a little bit of research on places he could go to collect data. Before taking my lunch break, I began drafting possible tweets for smoking prevention. After lunch, I was then given a task by Jenny to do research on care homes, specifically local care homes and the activities that they provide their residents.

Wednesday:

After catch-up, I continued working on the research I had begun the day before, putting the information into an excel sheet. Once I had completed the excel sheet, I then began reading different articles on the benefits that activities in a care home have for the residents and presented that information in a word document. My next task was to research events that are upcoming and then draft tweets that could be used to promote/announce them. Finally, I sat in on a CEO briefing and found out the vast impact that Lifeline has had within the community, as well as other projects that are ongoing.

Thursday:

Thursday is the day of the week that is online and so in the morning I joined a zoom meeting for catch up. Then, Agne and I went to Barking Library and attended a toddler group session, where I observed Agne as she went around asking all the mothers if they would be willing to take part in a survey that would help her collect the data that she needs for her upcoming project on women’s reproductive and sexual health issues.

Friday:

To start off the day, I had to finish up all the work that I had left over from the previous days, so I edited the blog I had written on Monday based on the suggestions that Agne gave me, and I typed up notes on the session that I had attended with Agne the day before. Having completed those tasks, I then did a little bit of data entry as I put in the data from the surveys collected the day before into SurveyMonkey. Agne and I then made our way to a Women’s Wellbeing session wherein I observed Agne again as she made her way through the group asking some of the women to take part in her survey and after my lunch break, I typed up notes about the session.