Healthcare employability - Health care

In this chapter, the focus to date has been more on generic employability issues. Within health care, the situation in relation to employability is not dissimilar to non-health related employability. Within the United Kingdom, there are system changes to health and social care that are having an influence on employability requirements of healthcare students, with changes to the employment options that are available for graduates. Regardless of where individuals work within health care in the world, there are changes to adapt to, with a resulting change in the employability requirements to prepare yourself for the future landscape of work.
Within each of the healthcare professions, the relevant professional and governing bodies publish basic minimum levels of professional and clinical competence. All students on a pre-registration healthcare course need to fulfil these criteria in order to graduate. From an employability point of view, this means that there are a large number of students who will be graduating with a similar professional and clinical competence profile. It is, therefore, crucial for healthcare students to focus on acquiring additional elements of employability during their studies, in order to strengthen their position within a competitive job market.
Papers within the United Kingdom – but which are equally relevant worldwide – have been written to provide an employability profile for healthcare students to refer to (Kubler and Forbes, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c). The main generic competencies identified by employers were outlined as:

Cognitive skills
Generic competencies
Personal capabilities
Technical ability
Business and/or organisational awareness
Practical and professional elements.

Within each of the generic competencies are listed numerous benchmarks and there are suggestions as to how these could be achieved. The documents are very long and predominantly focused on clinical and professional issues, but they are useful as documents to refer to when looking at employability within health care. Research undertaken by Taylor (2014) aimed to provide information on healthcare employability by undertaking focus group discussions and using a questionnaire survey with students, educators and employers as participants. There were common themes between the groups as to what was meant by employability and what is expected of healthcare graduates, over and above the requirements for professional registration. The participants were asked to rate the themes in order of importance. The three themes that were rated highest were: making a good impression, enthusiasm for the job and passion for the profession. The least important rated theme was academic grades. This does not mean that academic grades are not important, but in relation to the other employability themes it was rated as less important than all of the other themes.
The themes generated by the research by Taylor (2014) support the considerations of employability that have been presented in previous literature and provide employability considerations not just focusing on skills or attributes but on a holistic approach to employability. The degree and associated clinical competence and skills that come with it are important but what are rated as equally important are interpersonal elements. It is easy to demonstrate the achievement of your degree, as you will receive a certificate, but it is important to consider how you are going to demonstrate fulfilment of all of the other aspects of employability that have been highlighted as important.
Time for reflection
How do you currently rate yourself on the employability themes outlined? Could you provide evidence to demonstrate your employability within each of the themes presented?


Evidencing your employability

This chapter has outlined the concept of employability and described a number of models of employability. The underlying message throughout has been the ability of individuals to evidence their employability. Professional development portfolios enable individuals to report the employability journey that they have had (Hinchliffe and Jolly, 2011). There is a strong link between employability and professional development portfolios (Dacre Pool and Sewell, 2007). The process of producing a professional development portfolio will provide an individual with opportunities to reflect – which is an expectation in graduates (Atkins, 1999) – and then to generate an action plan to evidence a response to learning which is necessary (Yorke, 2006). Continuing professional development portfolios are good to demonstrate how individuals make sense of their experiences rather than just a list of the experiences (Fugate, Kinicki and Ashforth, 2004). Listing experiences does not demonstrate how the individual has learned and moved on from the experience – employers need to have confidence that individuals are able to do. Within healthcare education, reflection and continuing professional development are encouraged and supported from day one and you should then continue this throughout your working life. Being in the habit of reflecting and generating evidence of your continuing development is not only good for evidencing your employability but is also an essential requirement for most healthcare professional registration bodies.

Time for reflection

How will you systematically address and record your employability development?
Taylor (2014) used the focus group research to develop an evidence based UEA Healthcare Employability Development Portfolio. This portfolio provides healthcare students and educators with a software framework of employability based on the themes generated from the research (known as employability domains). Each employability domain has three incremental phases of development, so that students can develop their employability over a period of time (for example phase 1 for year 1, phase 2 for year 2 and phase 3 for year 3 of a 3-year pre-registration healthcare course). Supportive resources are provided at each phase of development to encourage reflection and action planning from the individual. This ensures that employability development is focused on throughout studies and also provides a structured approach to employability. Individuals completing the employability development portfolio generate evidence to document and this facilitates their confidence to articulate their employability journey at the point of applying for a job.
As previously suggested, continuing professional development is required within the healthcare working environment (Moore et al., 2011). Developing a positive and structured approach to professional development as a student will prepare you well for continuing this focus and discipline within the working environment. Employability is a life-long issue (Dacre Pool and Sewell 2007) and there needs to be a continuing focus on personal development and employability, which can help you in your career pathway – as discussed in Chapter 2. In order to develop a career, it is essential for you to go through the process of personal development planning to identify your areas of strength and development (Watts, 2006) that can be worked upon in a structured way.

Time for reflection
What key areas of employability do you need to focus on?

Conclusions
Employability is difficult to define and has been the topic of debate over a number of years. There are a number of models of employability. Many focus purely on the skill acquisition side of employability. However, a holistic approach to employability is recommended. Personal values and ethics emerge as a priority area of employability. Employability assumes a high priority within higher education institutions, but the implementation of employability within the curriculum and development of student employability is not entirely clear from the literature available, with only a few institutions fully embedding employability explicitly in the curriculum. Guidance for students and educators in the development of employability within education is limited. The understanding of employability for employers is not extensively documented but there has been a shift in recent years to the need for you to be flexible and resilient within changing working landscapes. The concept of an internal locus of control supports a proactive and opportunistic approach from you to the working environment to give yourself the best chance of maximising employability.
There needs to be more engagement between employers and higher education institutions to establish a common language of employability, which, in turn, will provide clarity for all of those involved in graduate employability. Healthcare students will all graduate with clinical and professional competence. Therefore, you need to focus on the other elements of employability to maximise your chances within a competitive work marketplace. Employers want to see evidence of employability to demonstrate the potential that you have and what you can bring to the workplace. Portfolios are encouraged as a way of organising a structured approach to employability development and encourage reflection and action planning as a result of learning. This provides you with evidence of your development and a continuing focus on personal development in relation to employability – employability is the journey, employment is the destination. In the ever changing world of work there will be multiple destinations with many employability journeys in between. Engagement in employability is essential from an early stage to maximise your own employability and career development opportunities.Definitions
Employability Within this book the term employability is used in the context of healthcare students who have just graduated or are about to graduate. The term is used to mean the knowledge, skills, attributes, experiences that you have had to date within your curriculum and extracurricular activities that will maximise your development and culminate in the ability to articulate yourself as an employable individual with confidence when applying for jobs. Employability continues when you are in employment, to demonstrate your continuing personal and professional development to maximise your potential for career progression.
Employment This term is used in this book to describe when you have acquired a job and are in employment.
Employability is the process of working towards being at the stage to apply for a job and employment is the outcome.

Potential interview questions in this area

How do your personal elements of employability relate to the personal specification for a specific job?
Do you think that skills or attributes are more important for this role?
How do you think that you should develop your employability whilst in employment?
What do you think you could contribute to our organisation?
Can you give me some examples of transferable skills that you can bring into the work environment?
What are your opinions on reflection?