Student Engagement in the

development of a common core

curriculum for health professions
Vivien Moffat, Universities Scotland
Donna Burns, Queen Margaret University
 ScCore Project
2 year project funded by Scottish Funding Council,
supported by Universities Scotland and NHS Education
for Scotland.
Scoping common core curriculum for allied health
professions and nursing.
Drivers for Change
Learning to Care (2008): Demand for flexibility in
education in order to meet changing workforce need e.g.
changes in professional roles.
Better Health Better Care (2007): Emphasis on
population health and community-based anticipatory
care and reducing health inequalities.
 Educational/ Workforce
Challenges
the time it takes to train health professionals.
educational delivery in remote and rural areas.
preparation for new roles.
employment expectations/ aspirations of graduates.
new regulatory requirements/ frameworks.
need to develop/strengthen partnerships between.
education and health service providers.
identifying most effective way to support learning and
share best practice.
 ScCore Project aim

To scope and pilot the reform of the Scottish four year

undergraduate honours degree for a range of nursing
and allied health professional programmes within the
framework of a common learning strategy in response to
the need for a flexible, effective and employable
workforce
 Project overview
Curriculum issues
Structural/Contextual issues Placements
Global student recruitment
Steering Group Assessments
Delivery methods
Demographic changes
Secondary to primary orientation.
Reference Group Curriculum models
Increased need for integration Regulatory requirements
Reduced recruitment pool against Staff/ Faculty development
rising healthcare need
Tradition of unidisciplinarity
Working Groups Organisational issues
Commercial modelling
Occupational Physiotherapy Speech and Chiropody Radiography Prosthetics Dietetics Arts Orthoptics Nursing
Therapy Language and –Therapeutic/ and Therapies
Therapy Podiatry Diagnostic Orthotics

Glasgow
Caledonian
University

Queen
Margaret
University

Robert
Gordon
University

Strathclyde
University

Scottish Funding Regulators Practitioners Employers ‘Experts’

Council
Workforce planners
Service users
Professional Bodies
Higher education
Government
Sector skills council Students Faculty Institutions Colleges
 Emerging questions
What are stakeholder perceptions of a curricular reform?

What are common attributes/capabilities for all health

professionals?

What would benefits be of more integrated ways of

preparing health professional staff?

What are the limits to integration?

Student Engagement
 Rationale
Students are key stakeholders.
Exploring recruitment and retention issues.
Student voice in programme/knowledge development.
Opportunity for student involvement- experience of
research process and development of role as peer
educator/champion for change.
Encouraging ownership.

Requires an open, exploratory, approach...

 Focus Groups
Current, recent and prospective students.

4-8 participants/group.

1 hour discussion – audio taped.

Students as co-researchers and facilitators –

preparation, data collection and analysis.

Representation on reference group.

 Recruitment
HEIs – academic staff, student reps, student
ambassador groups

Scotland’s Colleges- teaching staff

Working in health access network (WHAN) -schools

Recent graduates – HEI links

Constraints: ethics permissions, timing, student

response, research overload
 Participants
North
Undergraduate student focus groups x 2.
School (S4) focus groups x 2.

West
Undergraduate student focus group x 2.
New practitioner focus group.

South & East

Student focus groups x 2.
College focus groups x 2.
New practitioner focus group.
 Topic guide
1. Why you the chose this programme/ career/ HEI.

2. Structure - what did you expect from your programme

and what have you found?

3. Process - what kind of learning environment works for

you?

4. Outcome - what are the attitudes, actions and

behaviours that should be developed in order to
prepare students for practice as health professionals?

5. Perceptions of common core curriculum.

 Analysis
Interviews recorded and transcribed.

Transcripts read and re-read by more than one reviewer.

Grounded theory approach – emerging themes

compared and contrasted.

Analysis facilitated by NVivo 8.

Discussion amongst research group of emerging themes

 Early emerging themes

Working and learning together.

Developing professional identity.

Getting on with the job v. perceptions of graduateness.

Buy-in from academic and practice staff.

 Working and learning together

we will be working in multi-disciplinary teams so we have to

learn to get on with one another and I think the earlier that
starts the better

every profession has got the same goal which

is kind of improving people’s quality of life and
improving people’s health, we’re all kind of
singing off the same hymn sheet in the end
 Professional identity
it’s something which is crucial when you’re working,
to have your identity, to know your role or how you
fit in with the rest of the team. I think, certainly the
start of second year, I started to get my professional
identity, end of first year, just after placement

...me who’s very definite about wanting to do

nursing, having to wait 2 years to actually get
into it, would that make you want to just drop
out if you couldn’t stick, you know, just doing 2
years general?
 Learning together
Maybe if you had modules every year, that everybody did

Rather than just one year blocked off for doing that
because I think it’s important that we really
continue learning about our own specific profession
because that’s…

….what we’re here for

 Getting on with the job
when I realised that OT could be for me, I wanted to get
qualified and I wanted to do the job, but I’m quite
frustrated really having to be here for 4 years

I just don’t think there’s any difference that’s being

made from getting an honours degree. I don’t see
how you’re getting better people necessarily

I just know these are hoops I’ve got to jump through

 Graduateness

Evidence based practice is having the ability to go out

there and make sure that you are implementing what is
current in your profession, having gone through an
honours degree you will have that ability

the whole concept of the dissertation is that you

ask a question and the asking of the question is to
make you think how you can advance practice so I
would imagine that it is a transferable skill across
all the professions
 Staff Buy-in
when I was on placement, they had time set off and they
had discussions and it was really, really good ….. everyone
was involved and appreciated everybody else’s input and I
was really shocked that it actually worked so well, but really
impressed

one of the negative things of IPE at the moment is the

lecturers saying, ‘oh well, we don’t really want to be here
but here we are again for another year’ that doesn’t give
us any faith. Why are we there learning when they don’t
want to be teaching us this?
Key lessons/areas for exploration

Students perceive benefits in working and learning

together.
Importance of professional identity.
Extended period of generic preparation is a risk for
recruitment and retention.
Vocational model of preparation is strong.
Development/promotion of Graduate attributes.
Buy-in from stakeholders to facilitate change.
 Next steps
On-going data collection and analysis.
Informing debate.
Feedback to participants.
Informing development of options for curricular reform.

Further Information:
vmoffat@qmu.ac.uk
ScCore project website: www.sccore.org.uk
 Acknowledgements
We would like to thank:
Dr Stuart Cable – Director of the ScCore Project
Sharon Peel for transcribing

Staff and student researchers:

Anne Lawrie, Dr Stella Howden, Heather Hunter,
Karen Matthews, Charlotte Wright, Jamie Addis,

Staff at HEIs, Colleges and Schools

And most of all…. focus group participants!