Staff Development – The benefits of a student program for professional practice
Last year, due to lockdown, our organisation was not able to take on physiotherapy and exercise physiology students like we have for the past 15 or so years. As a direct result, recruitment this year has been harder. Our brand hasn’t been seen or had the same meaning it has had in the past to the previous groups of students.
On a regular basis, MD Health has around 20 students per year from various universities. These students are mostly from Victoria, but we have also taken on students from Queensland, France and several from the United States. Our initial primary aim was for recruitment. If we could give the students a great learning experience, they were more likely to choose us as their employer after graduation. This was especially considering a majority of student’s training was in the hospital system. That meant they were minimally exposed to private practice and we were minimally exposed to students.
It meant some work at the start, preparing tutorials and mapping out the learning experience. In reality, as we were used to training staff members, it wasn’t really going to be that different. The thinking was, if we start them the same way we would a new staff member, they would get real, work-based experience. They would get a great learning experience. On our side, if we ended up employing them, they had already begun a few weeks (4-6 weeks, depending on the length of their placement) of our training program. Thus, training them afterwards would be even easier.
There have been 3 specific and tangible benefits of this program to our organisation:
1) Recruitment –
About half the staff we employ are previous students and some of the others have heard about us from previous students. The great thing about hiring a previous student is that you get to “try before you buy”, for both sides. Instead of having to decide whether the student is the right fit for your company in a 1 hour interview or short series of interviews, you get to see what they are really like learning. You can see them interacting with staff, interacting with clients. Worst case scenario, if they are not a good fit, they got a great learning experience. They will tell other students about your organisation and you have both NOT made the mistake of making an employment relationship that does not fit either of you. A win/win for all.
2) Staff development –
One of the unexpected initial benefits of the student program is the leadership development of the junior staff members. One of our initial management steps is taking on a student co-ordinator position. It means that the junior staff member can learn to train other students, liaise with the universities and with the other staff members about their communication and role in training the students. They are not expected to train the student completely themselves, but to ensure that their placement times are set, the staff supervising the students at the time know what is expected of them and how to communicate back to the student co-ordinator how the student is progressing. They also learn to have tough conversations with students and universities when students are not performing or acting professionally. Everyone of our senior staff members, including myself, has held this position at some point in growing our management skills.
3) Technical development –
The other benefit of the program is that you all learn to be better clinicians. Because, firstly you need to explain clearly and easily to a student how to understand the pathologies. Also, how to assess them and how to treat them. It forces you to clearly understand the factors yourself. Your knowledge becomes crystallised and you are forced to look up gaps in your knowledge in order to teach it to others. In addition, you get to see what is current and being taught at the universities through the students. An interesting observation was how strong the US programs were and great the assessment and practical training for the United States students actually was. We found that Australian Physiotherapy student had great theoretical knowledge, but struggled and need a lot of assistance in implementing assessment and treatment skills. On the other hand, Exercise Physiology students were great at implementing exercise, but really need their hands held in understanding how exercise can be tailored to specific pathology.
– We are currently looking of a Physiotherapists or Exercise Physiologist to join our team at Kew East. If this sound like a place where you can grow your career, please e-mail us admin@mdhealth.com.au or call (03) 9857 0644 to find out more
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