Hi, I’m Emily, an Economics student from Sussex University, working in the Economics Strategic Analysis Team. Taking over from Morgan, I work on the Early Warning System project, we monitor positive cases, COVID admissions and COVID bed usage, working from a national level down to the granular hospital levels. As these metrics continually change, NHS senior directors require regular updates. Therefore, our team produces bi-weekly updates to provide insight into the latest trends.

Starting on this project has given me great exposure to the latest analytical tools the NHS is using and gives me frequent opportunities to practice communication, analysis and teamworking skills. My team is mainly project based and my colleagues work on a variety of subjects including A&E Crowding, strategic planning tools, measuring inequalities and many more. I have also joined the Virtual Ward project with the objective of evaluating the cost effectiveness of the home care wards.

My team is super friendly and welcoming, and I have even had the luxury of meeting a few of them in person on a social, in office and on team lunches. I feel really lucky to work with a variety of different colleagues who have diverse expertise, and it is great to hear everyone’s experiences and backgrounds. The work culture is also commendable because of the responsibility in day-to-day tasks, the strong moral values, and amazing support we get while being treated as an equal.

I have been given several of opportunities to expand my horizon, for example through Foundry training, Outreach Opportunities, internal NHS trainings, and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion workshops. The placement has also provided a great opportunity to experience recruitment from the employer’s perspective, especially since a lot tasks and responsibilities are delegated to students like me.

As a student it is also a unique opportunity to get work experience, working with real time, real world, and large impact data. Coming from Economics background and having a great passion for its application in Government. It’s really interesting to see the two working together in the real world while applying what was taught at university in such an important field.

So to anyone reading this, if this sounds like your groove we would love to receive your application! I’m sure any successful candidate would enjoy and gain as much from this placement as I and many others have.

Emily’s NHS Experience

Hi, I’m Morgan an Economics student from Loughborough University. I worked as an analytical support officer in the Economics and Strategic Analysis team (ESA) in 2020/2021. The Economics and Strategic Analysis team act as an in-house consultancy for the NHSE/I, meaning I was able to work on a number of interesting projects over the course of my placement year. This included analysis on projects such as the impact of the Discharge to Assess policies on patient length of stay, looking at health inequalities measures, analysing COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness, producing COVID-19 admissions forecasts and others. Through these projects, I was also given the opportunity to get involved with a wide range of work, both quantitative and qualitative. On projects such as the impact of the Discharge to Assess policies on patient length of stay and COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness, my work consisted of a lot of technical data analysis in Excel, Stata, R and SQL. Other projects such as COVID-19 admissions forecasting and looking at health inequalities involved me conducting literature reviews, building reports and presenting to senior managers.

During my placement in the ESA team, I had to chance to attend training workshops on a range of different subjects, from simple excel training to learning about interesting methods applied in recent projects. I also got the chance to help out in the recruitment of new students, both sifting applications and interviewing candidates. If I was ever struggling with something, someone in my team was always happy to put in a meeting with me and talk me through it. I found the ESA team and wider organisation to be extremely friendly and inclusive. Despite my placement being entirely online, due to the pandemic, I was always made to feel part of the team.

Morgan’s NHS Experience

Hi I’m Sam and I study Accountancy and Finance at the University of Huddersfield. During my placement I worked as an Analytical Support Officer in the Analysis and Insight for Finance team (AIF for short), specifically in payments.

The payments team primarily deal with long term projects which aim to support and inform the allocation of the NHS’s funds in order to tackle important issues such as health inequalities and the provision of best care practices for the patients of the NHS.

We also support the production of the National Tariff Payments System (NTPS) which is a publicly available document that is published annually. Its aim is to lay out how providers of health care will be paid for their services for the coming year based on a wide range of factors, helping the NHS to be financially stable and tackle issues on a more informed basis.

During my time working I have been given the opportunity to develop both my qualitative and quantitate analysis skills, working on both in depth spreadsheets/databases and in person interviews with key workers across the country. There were also many opportunities to carry out interesting research projects which aided in our analysis methods.

I have been given the opportunity to send my work to heads of my area and received feedback which I have found to be extremely valuable. I have also been assigned a direct line manager who I meet with on a weekly basis to discuss my progress and to offer any support when I have needed it.

I have found working for the NHS an extremely rewarding experience. It is very clear that the work you do is having a positive impact on others, and there is a really friendly environment of professionals who are all happy to offer up their time and support should I need it. I would highly recommend this placement opportunity to anyone interested in any form of analytical work.

Sam’s NHS Experience

Hi, I’m Stephanie, a Psychology student from the University of Surrey and I undertook my placement year as an analytical support officer in the Early Years, Children, Families and Abortion Statistics team within the Health Improvement and Disparities Policy Analysis team in DHSC, in 2021/22.

During my placement, I have contributed to generating the statistics and commentary for official statistical publications to monitor policies and this involved analysing large datasets; for example, producing the publication on birth sex ratios in the United Kingdom analyses data over a five-year period. In my role, I would also create monthly reports to send to clinics and inform doctors, respond to ad-hoc requests from individuals in the government or the public and give numerous presentations on the work produced in my team. These projects involved using R and Excel to run statistical techniques, but despite having no previous experience working with R, I was provided with training, given access to learning resources, and supported by my team to learn the program. As a result, I worked on another project, creating my own R code to move the analysis of a publication into R and increase the accessibility.

There have been many other opportunities that I have also been able to take part in, such as leading an away day for my wider team, gaining insight into the recruitment process by assisting the student analyst recruitment team and building up my analytical skills through attending DSHC analyst induction academy events.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my placement working in DHSC because the supportive environment gave me the chance to develop new skills and have an insight into various areas of government work, all of which will be valuable for future job applications.

Stephanie’s DHSC Experience

Hi, I’m Chris, an Economics student from Aston University, Birmingham. I worked as an Analytical Support Officer in the Performance Analysis Team, specifically in Diagnostics in 2021/22.

My team are responsible for all queries and reports related to diagnostic procedures (e.g. MRI and CT scans) which are all documented on the Diagnostic Imaging Database (DID). I am responsible for producing a monthly report on activity and waiting times related to these scans which involves extensively using excel alongside more specialist programmes such as SAS.

I have also worked on producing an annual report which requires undertaking more in-depth analysis alongside a detailed commentary. This year, there was a particular focus on the impact of COVID and the differences in recovery across different diagnostic scans, patient sources (e.g. A&E, GP) and investigating the changes in waiting times.

I also work on several ad-hoc requests analysing the data further and providing breakdowns and explanations to senior management or stakeholders.

My team has been extremely supportive; whenever I am stuck, they take their time to help me understand and address the issue I am facing so I learn in the process. There is a wide range of regular training available for anybody looking to develop their knowledge from learning new computer programs to gaining and insight on what other departments do. I have also gained extremely valuable experience in recruitment by participating in the process of recruiting new students for the placement scheme. I have helped in the advertising of the placement to universities as well as taking part in the sifting and interviewing.

I cannot emphasise what a good experience this placement has been. I genuinely feel like I have not been a placement student, but a professional working for a team that appreciates the work I do and is interested in helping me develop myself by giving me experience in as many things as possible.

Chris’ NHS Experience

Hi, I’m Daniel and I study Natural Sciences at the University of York, and since August I’ve been an Analytical Support Officer in the Medicines Analysis Team inside the Commercial Medicines Directorate.

My department is responsible for providing analysis to ensure all patients have appropriate and fair access to medicines and technologies whilst taking into account clinical appropriateness and value for money, whilst the majority of my work is on the supply of COVID medicines.

My routine responsibilities include work around observing the recent actual hospital admissions and occupancy statistics and considering their effect on the medicine supply position, while ad-hoc work I’ve completed includes analysis into where increases in usage are originating from, and a comparison of different future demand scenarios and their subsequent effects on supply. As you may imagine, senior management are incredibly interested in our work around COVID currently, and as a result I regularly receive requests for analysis and give presentations to, Senior Responsible Officers.

NHSE&I/DHSC also give the opportunity for current placement students to manage significant parts of the recruitment campaign for next year’s student analysts, from advertising and presenting to universities, to discussing grading criteria. I’ve found this to be a fantastic opportunity to build project management skills, and see for myself the methods and systems on the other side of the recruitment process.

I recommend this placement to anyone with an analytical skillset and a mind for seeing work turn into change – I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my first three months. My team are incredibly supportive, and I’m very much treated as an equal. I’ve been given far more responsibility than I was expecting as a student analyst, and the skills I’ve gained in presentation, fast-turnaround analysis, and managing responsibility, I’ll take forward into university and my career.

Daniel’s NHS Experience

Hi, I’m Gevorg, a Computer Science student at the University of Manchester. I am working in the Pharmacy Strategy and Insight team as a Business Support Assistant. Our team is odd in the sense that we get requests for work from a variety of sources regarding a variety of topics. The team used to solely focus on pharmacy but has been expanded into dentistry. Some examples of regular work we do are ad-hoc requests regarding pharmacy data, analysis and reporting of weekly CPCS data and automation of existing analysis using R.

During my time at the placement, I have mainly used Excel, SQL, R, GitHub and Tableau. As of the writing of this, my main pieces of work are creating an automated infographic on pharmacy headline figures in Tableau and collaborating on a larger scale project with my team to produce an automatically generated data pack using R and GitHub. I am also responsible for generating some weekly, fortnightly and monthly reports. These projects have given me greater insight on the functioning of pharmacies and dentistry in England, a chance to improve my teamwork skills and learn how to use unfamiliar software.

My team is very supportive: they always patently explain tasks, answer any questions and are happy to help if I get stuck or run into unexpected issues. As the team is varied in terms of expertise, I can always find the right person to assist me in different situations. I have also had a chance to meet most members of the team in person and we regularly arrange office days for teambuilding purposes.

Overall, my placement has been great and I would recommend it to anyone. It has given me a better understanding on working in the public sector, increased my employability and finally, allowed me to connect with fantastic people within my team and the larger NHS organisation.

Gevorg’s NHS Experience