Case study - Perry Draycott

Student Operating Department Practitioner, University of Leicester

Ex Armed Forces

After making the big decision to leave the Armed Forces and go back into education I started to look into courses that would be of interest to me. I came across the role of Operating Department Practitioner whilst looking through the list of allied health professions. I decided to look into this further as unfortunately I had never heard of it before.

After some research I knew this role would suit me more than the others and I decided to start applying to universities.

I was really looking forward to this fresh start, but that soon came to a halt, as I was told that I didn’t have the qualifications to be allowed to start the course in September 2020. I was advised from every single university that provides the ODP course (apart from Leicester) that I would first need to spend a year doing an access course as none of my military experience/qualifications would count.

However, I am not one to just accept my fate and decided to do some more research. That is when I came across the Higher Education England, Step into Health video. I managed to contact Vicki from the video, she told me about the University of Leicester course and I secured myself an interview with the course lecturer, Amanda.

The interview was very straight forward, and it was nice to see that the University of Leicester were very supportive of ex-military personnel. Although, I do not have the standard entry requirements for the course, Leicester took into account my military experience and qualifications. And to my shock, after all the knock backs I received in the previous months they offered me place to start in September 2020.

The whole process since then has been very straight forward and the University have been very helpful and supportive.

I am looking forward to this new start and I hope that this campaign will be offered from more universities in the future.