RCHT receives six nominations at the 2025 Cornwall Apprenticeship Awards

The Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust has six shortlisted nominees at the 2025 Cornwall Apprenticeship Awards. Among these nominations, RCHT has also been shortlisted in the Large Employer category for the second year running.

The shortlisted colleagues from RCHT include Sarah Collett and Lilita Miller (Nursing and clinical), Tom Heap and Safiya Hicks (Healthcare and Early Years) and Harry Cranstone (Accountancy). This is as well as the nomination for Large Employer of the Year.

Nicola Pryke, Apprenticeship Lead for RCHT, said:

“This is an outstanding endorsement for us. To receive even one nomination is a great achievement, but to have six nominations shortlisted in four categories, including Large Employer of the year for the second year running, once again highlights the hard work of everyone involved across RCHT, including our apprentices, the mentors who support them, the supervisors, and my own colleagues in the Learning and Development team. All of us are incredibly excited for the award ceremony next year and we hope any success on the night will help us to attract more people to take on an apprenticeship at RCHT and across the wider NHS.”

In a 2024 RCHT apprenticeship survey, 92% of respondents felt their apprenticeship experience at RCHT met or exceeded their expectations, and the Trust’s overall score (out of 5) for the apprenticeship experience has improved every year. It’s now 4.02 as opposed to 3.76 in 2022.

“RCHTs apprenticeship programme is aligned to our workforce strategy of growing our own talent,” Nicola continues. “As it matures, we are seeing colleagues who joined as entry level apprentices now completing degree level apprenticeships and working in senior roles within our hospitals. Our current apprenticeship retention rate of 93% is something we are also very proud of. We continue to widen our apprenticeship opportunities and work with different training providers to enable colleagues to commence apprenticeships to develop within their roles.”

New apprenticeships offered this year at RCHT include Learning and Development Practitioner, Data Engineer and Data science degree, Coaching professional and Digital marketing degree.

The high-profile awards ceremony will again celebrate a night of exceptional achievement across 18 categories, with the gala awards dinner presented by Neil and Saffy from Hits Radio (Cornwall) Breakfast Show taking place on Friday 07 February.

The 2025 Awards will include ‘Nursing and Clinical’ and ‘Healthcare and Early Years’ categories for the first time. These categories have been added to the event to reflect the recent growth and impact of apprenticeships in these sectors. The new categories join the highly popular ‘Academic Mentor’ and ‘Workplace Mentor of the Year’ categories. These were added in 2024 to recognise those who offer apprentices exceptional levels of support to achieve strong starts to their future careers.