Workplace-ready through hands-on learning
Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) supports practice-based learning across Wales, giving learners hands-on experience to build essential skills, deliver quality care, and grow professionally through real-world practice and reflection. Through this, learners:
- gain valuable, hands-on experience in real work settings
- build practical skills
- deepen specialist knowledge
- understand how care is delivered
- understand how strategic priorities contribute to a healthier Wales.
Over recent years, practice-based learning experiences have expanded to include more primary and community care as well as hospital settings, giving students and trainees valuable opportunities for example in GP surgeries, community services, rural areas, and independent and third-sector organisations.
HEIW is working with key education, health and care organisation partners to ensure further critical development of these opportunities, reflecting the important shift in healthcare toward care closer to home, a focus on prevention, and services designed around local communities. By supporting this change, HEIW is helping build a workforce that is skilled, flexible, and connected to the people and places it serves.
Expanding practice-based learning provides a crucial opportunity for students and trainees to gain the skills they need to deliver effective care after they register as a professional.
Simon Cassidy, Head of Placement Experience and Improvement said:
“The impact of this work is vital for students and trainees across healthcare professions so they have exposure to contemporary models of service delivery. Also, that practice-based learning opportunities are available across all geographies, sectors and settings that reflect the language, culture, and local needs of the population. And especially important that students’ exposure to interprofessional ways of working reflects these contemporary shifts in health and social care.”
Interested to learn more? Visit the HEIW website or contact the HEIW Placements Team or local Practice Education Facilitators.