Starting this week on International Women’s Day and as part of Women’s History Month, we want to celebrate many changemakers who are alumnae of Norwich High School for Girls.

Today we shine a spotlight on Nikki Kerdegari (Class of 2019) who is currently studying Medicine at Kings College London. Nikki, along with other peers, has been working on a free of charge educational platform for aspiring and current healthcare students called Future Frontline. We caught up with Co-Founder Nikki during British Science Week to tell us all about it.

What is Future Frontline and how did the idea come about?

Future Frontline is a completely free of charge educational resource established in August 2020 to inspire and help students to become the next generation of healthcare professionals in the National Health Service (NHS).

Interprofessional education is taught as part of the curriculum for many healthcare degrees as it is so important for healthcare students to understand the role that every member of the multidisciplinary team plays as these are the colleagues we will be working with on a daily basis to care for patients. However, the opportunities for such learning can be very limited given everything else that healthcare students must do- attend lectures tutorials, placement, learn practical skills and revise for exams, so Future Frontline was born.

What are the aims and objectives of Future Frontline?

There are over 350 different NHS careers, each of which should be understood and celebrated by today and tomorrow’s healthcare workers and inspire the next generation of the NHS frontline. By understanding the critical work of every member of the multidisciplinary team, we can deliver patient-centred care to help improve patients’ lives with a strong support network around them.

We do this through a variety of platforms such as our social media, podcast and website. The Future Frontline website features over 60 blog posts written by current and aspiring healthcare students as well as healthcare professions on a variety of topics such as advice for applicants, current hot topics in the NHS, what it is like to study a healthcare degree and insight into each of the healthcare professions. This month we launched a webinar series for university applicants covering over 20 different healthcare careers with the support of organisations such as The College of Paramedics. Led by a panel of current students on the relevant course and healthcare professionals, we discuss what it is like to study the particular course as well as work in that field of healthcare. Not only does this help give university applicants a better insight into the profession whilst in-person work experience opportunities are heavily limited, but it also enables us all to improve our understanding of the multidisciplinary team that is at the centre of any patient’s care.

What is next for Future Frontline?

It has been fantastic seeing how well-received Future Frontline has been with over 3500 followers on our Instagram and over 300 students attending some of our webinars. None of this would be possible without the amazing team at Future Frontline comprised of over 20 team leads from universities across the country. This is only the start for Future Frontline and over the summer we will be working to further develop and explore how we can work with healthcare organisations to expand our current work. We are only able to do what we do thanks to the generosity of students and healthcare professionals that give up their time to write for us and speak at our events. We are always looking for more healthcare students and professional to join our team. Anyone interested can apply through our website here.

What does Future Frontline mean to you?

Future Frontline represents a future with collaborative practice at the centre of everything we do in healthcare. By widening participation, we can diversify our perspectives and opinions, leading to new ideas and better outcomes for patients.

I hope to inspire students to explore the vast array of healthcare careers out there – the NHS is about more than doctors and nurses so if those amazing careers don’t appeal to you, there are plenty of other ways for you to be involved in healthcare and there is a place for you in the NHS.