HEALTH AND WELLBEING SHORT COURSES
Case study:
The University of Winchester Faculty of Health and Wellbeing Short Courses
CASE STUDY
How the University of Winchester has strategically developed a portfolio of demand-led healthcare sector CPD short courses
Project: Development of a short course CPD portfolio for the Faculty of Health and Wellbeing
Collaborating Organisations: Healthcare stakeholders, professionals, and organisations Project Timescales: Ongoing
Working in close collaboration with healthcare stakeholders, professionals, and organisations, the Faculty of Health and Wellbeing at the University of Winchester has developed a portfolio of short courses in response to sector need to support the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of healthcare professionals.
The University of Winchester’s Research and Development Team
Justine Clements is the Business Development Manager for the Faculty of Health and Wellbeing at the University of Winchester; she has been integral in the faculty’s rapid trajectory of growth since its launch in 2019.
With a background in project management in the IT sector and for the government, Justine’s expertise in project management and stakeholder engagement is fundamental to her role at the University of Winchester. Justine’s work comprises project work and developing the faculty’s portfolio of longterm programmes and short courses.
Led by Justine, the Faculty has strategically developed a portfolio of demand-led healthcare sector short courses, the process of which has become an exemplar of short course development for the University of Winchester.
Project Overview
Responding directly to the needs of the healthcare sector and the professionals working within it, the Faculty of Health and Wellbeing at the University of Winchester has developed a portfolio of CPD short courses. Each course is prompted by employer or stakeholder demand, such as a problem to solve, an upskilling need, a gap in provision, or a lack of education in the area.
The courses available are either credit bearing (a named programme of study aligned to a module within an undergraduate or postgraduate programme) or non-credit bearing (with no formal assessment).
HEALTH & WELLBEING
We have experts in our employer organisations, codelivering the content with us. If they’ve got expertise, then bringing people in from practice to help us to make the content as contemporary as possible is really valuable
An example of a short course is correlated with the current objective of the health services to expand the scope of care that each healthcare professional can deliver to meet patients’ needs. The short course Independent Prescribing enables health professions to become qualified to prescribe medicines. Upskilling those professional groups to be able to perform that function consequentially streamlines healthcare delivery.
Justine explains, “I think what’s been different about our approach to short course development is doing that external scan for demand. The short courses that have been successful are the ones where there’s a clear need.”
Partnerships
The short course development has been based on a reciprocal model with stakeholders, where collaborating partners are both contributors and beneficiaries of what the University of Winchester does in health and wellbeing.
The course design must meet the needs of the stakeholders effectively. Some of them are regulated by organisations such as the Nursing Midwifery Council and the Health Care Professions Council, and all courses must meet the University of Winchester’s standards and quality assurance process.
An example of such close stakeholder collaboration is with the online short course on the eating disorder ARFID (Avoidant / Restrictive Food Intake Disorder) in partnership with the charity ARFID Awareness UK as a stakeholder of the Nutrition and Dietetics degree. ARFID Awareness UK was seeing a rise in cases of ARFID and a lack of understanding and recognition of the disorder in healthcare and they’d identified a gap in education. The University of Winchester and ARFID Awareness UK developed a short course that is now taken by 250 healthcare professionals per year including dieticians, nurses, GPs, and psychologists.
What we did
Project Challenges
The common challenge is the availability of people working in health and social care to do any CPD. The time constraint of the participants as professional, full-time working learners is the biggest limiting aspect and has been factored significantly into the course design.
The short courses are offered in a way that is accessible as possible – some are in-person, and some are online. Adapting the way that the courses are delivered outside of the traditional semesters of the University has taken some work, but the courses are now well-established.
Project Impact
All short courses that are externally commissioned have formal evaluations. For all of them, regardless of their funding arrangements, there is an annual report in terms of financial viability, quality metrics, and iterative improvement recommendations.
Best Practices
The faculty has found that people progress much better with a cohort alongside them to foster a learning community, even in an online environment, so that the discussions are live and interesting.
The other lesson in developing a portfolio of courses is to start small and deliver a high-quality and accessible experience. If that then proves to be popular and successful, a more comprehensive phase two can be developed.
Justine explains, “The learner must be at the centre of all the decisions that are taken about the course design and the content.”
Future Prospects
Now that a successful portfolio of short courses has been developed, the aspiration for the project is to create a pathway so that learners can build a portfolio in their learning journey.
Our vision is to create lifelong learning journeys and relationships between professionals and the University of Winchester. Not just for when they qualify, but throughout their career through sustainable learning pathways.
Justine Clements, University of Winchester
For further information please contact the Research and Innovation team on collaborate@winchester.ac.uk
RESEARCH AND INNOVATION
University of Winchester, Sparkford Road, Winchester, Hampshire, SO22 4NR
winchester.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 1962 841515