Tension and excitement have started to build within Team UK as our skills champions complete day 3 of competitions. Today also saw the start of China’s mid-autumn festival, also known as the moon festival, bringing large crowds of locals to the event. For Team UK competitors in service industries, that meant tuning out the thousands of spectators who had spent the national holiday visiting, and focus on delivering personalised care to the volunteer participants who are an essential part of their competitions. “I feel like the training can prepare you as much as possible, but it’s not until you actually get here that you realise how big it is,” said Neve Dunn, who is competing in beauty therapy. She added: “The judges have got to be up close to judge everything we’re doing, and with all the public walking past, it is crazy, but the atmosphere is amazing and it makes you perform at your best.” The UK has not competed in beauty therapy at the international level since 2019, when Rebecca West brought home a gold medal from Kazan, Russia. Dunn, a South Shields native, has had an intense competition so far, with challenging modules including administering a full-body treatment and facial and pedicure treatments on a paid model, which are worth the most marks (55 per cent) over the four days of competition. “The full body treatment is a massage, a full body mask, cleanse and exfoliation and electrical treatment. It’s a lot within one module,” she explained. Customer feedback is not part of the judging process, so models do not get to rate competitors. Instead, competition experts examine how beauty therapists communicate with the clients and how safely and hygienically they perform treatments. Dunn’s module today was nails, and tomorrow’s is set to fantasy make-up and nails and ending with a model performance to show off each country’s designs. Competitors will be given a theme to work from and will have to create a design on the spot in the allotted time. “We won’t have the theme until tomorrow when we start, so let’s pray it’s something I’ve trained for,” Dunn said. “I’ve done a lot of Chinese-themed make-up – a lot of red and gold – so I can make it big for the make-up show. Hopefully being in Shanghai, it will be something related to that.” What it takes to care On the other end of the exhibition hall, health and social care competitor Grace Longden was pleased with her three tasks over the last two days. Longden was tasked with treating two diabetes patients, played by volunteers. One pretended to be a young man with a recent type 1 diabetes diagnosis. “I was educating him on how to use insulin, lifestyle advice, and then responding to low blood sugar by giving a sugary snack,” she explained. The second patient involved taking the blood pressure of a type 2 diabetes patient with hypertension and also giving lifestyle advice. Today, Longden went through three more modules, dealing with patients on end-of-life care, tuberculosis and one with alcohol problems. As a physiotherapy student at Keele University, Longden has been able to flex her favourite skill muscle during the competition. “Especially for the stroke patient, he had very reduced mobility; I had to use a banana board to transfer him from the bed to a wheelchair.” Bedside care is an important skill that distinguishes excellent competitors from average ones, but to Longden, she thinks the skill comes naturally to her. “What I tend to do when I’m planning for my modules, I think about how the patient must be feeling if this was a real situation and then empathise with them. We get a lot of marks for it so it’s a part of our skill.” Read more about day 3 on our live blog