I do see why they run it this way. Most admin staff don't have much patient contact really, and when they do it's usually not ongoing. But I do, and when I found out that work experience would be covered at interview, I assumed it would be a qualitative thing - actually talking about my experiences. I didn't expect it to be some kind of score based on doing x many hours. Which seems kind of reductive and not exactly in the spirit of things.
As it is, I'm going to have to take time away from my job - where I have actual responsibilities to patients - in order to fulfil this arbitrary number of hours giving a complementary service! I think it's an absolute nonsense to say, as Warwick do, that volunteering on a ward shows you the 'unpleasant aspects of medicine'. That's the good bit! When as a volunteer would you ever: Make a mistake and have to apologise to a patient; have to beg a consultant to talk to a patient; take abuse from a patient who you can't ignore because you have a duty of care to them; feel like you were going to fail someone because of your workload?
I would feel differently if any doctors I've known had said that volunteering experience had made a really profound difference to them.
It's a bit of a bugbear of mine to be honest. It's precisely because there's no sense of non-clinical staff having care built into their jobs, that so many patients have such a terrible experience dealing with the NHS outside of an acute setting.
I would have loved to get a job as an HCA or A&e assistant or something this year, but as you say it pays peanuts and I wouldn't have been able to save enough.