I was born and raised in Germany but my family moved to the UK when I was 18 years old. I'd been to college and studied electronics but, unfortunately, I didn’t get to finish as my dad was in the army and we were posted here. I did some agency jobs and then became a forklift driver.

After 15 years, when I was in my early 30s, I decided I wanted a career change. One of my friends, who was a theatre sister here, mentioned that they were recruiting. She managed to get me an opportunity shadowing someone in the Orthopaedic theatre which I loved.

I wasn’t sure initially about whether to apply for this job because I thought I needed some formal healthcare education, but it wasn’t necessary. I applied and they gave me on-the-job training. I was given a mentor, a training book, and a series of competencies that I needed to complete, and now here I am.

We provide training which simulates all sorts of scenarios that might occur in a hospital. No day is the same. We sit down with the clinical leaders on the wards and see what learning outcomes are needed. Each morning I'll run a simulation, so for instance, it might be on the Maternity Ward one day. We have different mannequins so we can put a pregnant belly on them and even a baby inside so we can simulate a C-section.

Then, in the afternoon, I might put the trauma make up on a mannequin and take it down to the Emergency Department to run another simulation there. Sometimes we literally have blue lights and run into the area with a life-or-death emergency. It's all designed to be as realistic as possible.

My boss writes the scenarios, and we do a full brief. A scenario can go one way or another, depending on what the doctor says and your responses. There are so many skills you need to use. We work with every speciality and I am always learning. Every day we work on a different ward. We put all our film footage and photos on our Twitter account @salisburysim!