Employer: City and Hackney Teaching Primary Care Trust
Age: 36
Time in job: 18 months
Salary range: £37,106 to £44,527
Sarah Bekaert works as an advanced nurse practitioner in teenage health for the City and Hackney Teaching Primary Care Trust (CHtPCT).
Bekaert works on the pilot teenage health demonstration site, which is known as Chyps (City and Hackney Young People's Service) Plus. This provides a holistic model of healthcare, giving young people aged 11 to 19 access to GPs and other health workers.
She has been in the job for 18 months and her work includes attending management meetings, visiting colleges and sixth forms to run clinics, and working at the main clinic at the Chyps Plus centre.
"The sessions at Chyps Plus are all drop-in. Young people hear about us through word of mouth," says Bekaert.
For her, the challenge is "working with young people to make them realise that certain behaviour such as taking drugs and smoking can be detrimental to their health. They often come in for contraception but it is important to talk to them about all of their health, not just their sexual health," she says.
In order to do her job, you need "patience and tenacity", she says. "And you must enjoy working with young people. It sounds obvious but some people in this profession don't."
She took her nurse-prescribing qualification a few years ago and claims this has been "invaluable" in giving her the power to prescribe certain drugs. "When I visit places I can prescribe certain medicine on the spot," she says.
My day
8.30: Check email and do admin
10.00: Attend meetings
13.00: Pre-arranged appointments
15.00: Clinic. This is either on the main site or at various schools and colleges
18.00: Do paperwork and referrals.
