Lena joined First Community in 2010 and completed her Health Visitor training with her placement being at First Community.
Lena has completed projects and secondments and is now working as our Improvement and Transformation Lead.
Here is what Lena says about working at First Community.
Development
“I applied to First Community in 2010 as a staff nurse and I actually didn’t get it but I got some excellent feedback and was encouraged to apply and complete the health visitor training. I had a brilliant experience because First Community were very supportive of me getting the richest experience I could get from the training so I had a lot of freedom about where I would do my placements.
When I qualified I worked as a health visitor and it was busy but there was a good preceptorship in place and training provided.”
Progression
“There was an opportunity to do a secondment in productive community services which was a completely different role. First Community supported me to do it for 2 days a week. At the same time I completed my MSc dissertation and I had a lot of support from the research part of First Community.
From there I did an in-house leadership course and applied to be a clinical team leader. I needed more training an so I completed the Mary Seacole course with the NHS Leadership Academy. I was able to take the learning from the course and apply it straight to the job."
Opportunities
“First Community has a positive culture of learning and, because we are a small company, you get opportunities that you might not get elsewhere.
I started to think about transformation and I applied for a secondment in transformation across the company. This eventually became a permanent role. So I’m now continuing my learning journey, getting lots of exposure across the company about how to transform services for the benefit of patients.”