Nursing technician Aimee Truesdale supports the staff team in the School of Nursing and Paramedic Science on the University’s campus in Derry~Londonderry.
Aimee studied Sport and Physical Activity at UU, completing her placement year as a technician in the sports lab on campus. While studying for her degree, Aimee worked as a part time sports facilitator of Ulster University Students’ Union (UUSU), encouraging involvement in sport as part of a health and wellbeing drive for both students and staff. Aimee went on to complete her Masters in sports psychology and continued to work with the University’s sports services team during this time, managing her work commitments around the compressed teaching of the programme. Aimee moved to the HSC Trust for an internship at Altnagelvin hospital working across children and women’s health disciplines before transferring into children’s disability services.
Returning to Ulster in 2022 as a technician in the School of Nursing, Aimee then moved across in the then new School of Medicine for 18 months. The camaraderie of the School of Nursing team and the opportunity to return to being a technician in one of the University’s largest schools, encouraged Aimee back to take up her current role. As technician in the School of Nursing and Paramedic Science, Aimee supports lecturers in booking equipment for timetabled teaching sessions, sets up equipment for teaching sessions, facilitates bookings for specialist equipment, and contributes to the fixed assets register.
Aimee explains:
“We support procurement such as contributing to the specification for the new defibrillator for paramedic teaching. With the Competence Test Centre moving to new premises nearby, the School will extend into that space which will retain its specialist teaching and assessment equipment.
As technicians we can look forward to expanding access to the simulation suite and all that it has to offer to technical and clinical teaching and learning.With the space accessible to other health and medical disciplines, we will have opportunities to work with technicians from other course programmes in the multi-disciplinary healthcare hub here on campus.”
Enjoying the caring aspect of nursing as a subject area, future career options for Aimee include considering pursuing a PhD in sports psychology given her love of research, or following a technical path that builds on her existing role. With these career ambitions in mind, Aimee is one of several UU technicians enrolled on the national Herschel Programme for Women in Technical Leadership, adding:
“I would recommend the programme to anyone in a technical role. I am learning so much alongside national and internal participants and it’s a very active group of women on the programme. Every experience and opportunity is helping to shape the steps I may take in my career and the sort of leader I aspire to be.”