Christopher Larham moved into Sterile Services Supervisor

I started the Traineeship in 2021 because I was no longer enjoying my role as an Assistant Technical Officer in the Sterile Services Department of Treliske Hospital. I had been doing the same job for thirteen years, and – although I had made many friends and enjoyed my work over the years – I felt that the time had come for me to move on. To be fair to my managers, they had been suggesting that I move up to a Supervisor role for a long time, but I lacked confidence in my problem-solving and people management skills.

I enjoyed the fact that it is a self-paced course that can be completed while working full-time. You have to complete all aspects of the course within a year in order to secure the job guarantee, but there is the option to renew for a further year and retain the job guarantee if – like me – you prefer not to rush your studying, but rather work methodically and absorb it all. The tutor support for the end-of-course projects was great too, and the projects themselves were interesting and enjoyable.

Simultaneous with Paddy signing off my final project and passing me over to recruitment, a Supervisor job was advertised in my current workplace. After two years of thinking analytically and algorithmically in order to complete the Coding Traineeship, I had the confidence in my problem-solving skills to apply for the Supervisor job. I am now a month into my new role, and I am enjoying using the logical skills acquired during my study in order to supervise a team of decontamination technicians.