The employability project

 

The subject centre is participating in a project to explore the issues relating to employability within medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine. Employability primarily relates to a student’s capability to make good career/specialism choices and to work effectively in the professional environment. Surveys of employer expectations have confirmed that they generally expect graduates to be:

  • good at communicating
  • numerate
  • IT literate
  • capable of taking initiative
  • able to work well in teams
  • able to manage themselves
  • able to continue to learn.

In theory such qualities can be taught through separate programmes but in practice they are more likely to be learned and valued by students if they are embedded in the curriculum and included in the formal assessment processes.

The project will explore the appropriate strategies and policies for promoting employability within our constituency. This will be done by:

  • Linking in with the cognate subject centres to obtain advice and learn from experience
  • Establishing a ‘special interest group’ of practitioners, researchers and professional bodies/employers to explore the key issues
  • Raising awareness of ‘employability’ and putting it on the agenda of relevant local and national meetings e.g. BMA, BDA, RCVS, ASME etc
  • Obtaining case studies and examples of practice
  • Disseminating the results of the work of the special interest group via local and national meetings and publications/special reports

If you would like to be involved with this project and especially if you would like to join the special interest group, then please email nigel.purcell@ncl.ac.uk

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has funded the Enhancing Student Employability Co-ordination Team (ESECT) to help the sector engage with this policy priority. Go to http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ for more information about the work of ESECT and about employability in general .

enquiries@medev.ac.uk

+44 191 222 5888

The Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine

School of Medical Sciences Education Development, Faculty of Medical Sciences,
Newcastle University, NE2 4HH