Using Enterprise Education to Prepare Healthcare Professional Graduates for the Real World

Abstract

<jats:p> This paper reports an investigation of the extent to which enterprise education (EE) is used in professional health schools at HEIs to develop graduates' ‘soft’ and ‘functional’ enterprise skills, and assesses the effectiveness of the process of delivering this education. A qualitative research study was carried out, using personal interviews with employers and academics, and thematic analysis was used to identify themes and codes. It was found that although experiential and interactive learning approaches are often used in pharmacy schools, the emphasis is typically on discipline-related material and therefore only ‘soft’ enterprise skills are developed. There appears to be resistance to developing ‘functional’ enterprise skills in pharmacy disciplines. Suggestions are offered for facilitating the development of healthcare graduates who are more enterprising, while highlighting the importance of raising the awareness of academics in this regard and embedding EE as part of a school's philosophy. </jats:p>

Focus point: the need for alternative insight into the entrepreneurial education paradigm

“…Henry et al (2005) argue the need for different skill sets in the education of entrepreneurs such as technical skills including oral and written communication, business management skills including strategic awareness, marketing and finance, and personal skills developed through learning via experience. Refai and Thompson (2014) agree to this this and highlight the need for developing both functional and soft skills in entrepreneurial education. Similarly, Neck and Green (2011) advocate that entrepreneurship education should stimulate the development of business management knowledge alongside entrepreneurial competencies (i.e.…”

A Systematic Review of Entrepreneurship in Pharmacy Practice and Education

“…After the application of inclusion criteria during the abstract screening and full-text assessment of eligibility stages, 27 articles were included for analysis ( Figure 1). 4,6,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]16,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] The types of papers included in the study were surveys ( The most frequent roles for entrepreneurship in both pharmacy practice and pharmacy education are described in Table 1. In terms of pharmacy practice, entrepreneurship was most frequently associated with innovation and creativity to develop new opportunities for pharmacists.…”

“…Strategic planning 4,6,18,25,27,28,32,39 and decisionmaking 4,6,18,24,25,27,31 appeared frequently as key areas for pharmacist entrepreneurs. The field of strategic management frequently overlaps with entrepreneurship, revolving around assessing and evaluating market opportunities.…”

“…Critical-thinking or problem-solving skills were cited frequently as components of pharmacy entrepreneurship. 6,16,24,26,27 Multiple validated critical-thinking instruments have been studied in pharmacy education. These articles describe the implementation process and study design challenges, which varied depending on whether the assessment tool was developed for use with undergraduates or specific to health care practice.…”

Enterprise education in pharmacy schools

“…Studying pharmacy in the UK has increased in popularity as statistics show that the number of UK pharmacy students has increased from 4,200 in 1999 to 9,800 in 2009; this was associated with an increase in the number of UK pharmacy schools from 12 to 21 during the same period (Centre for Workforce Intelligence, 2012). The career paths for these graduates require the demonstration of various skills 'soft' enterprise such as problem solving, communication and self-learning (The Expert Group Report, 2008; AGCAS, 2011; Refai and Thompson, 2014). Most graduates choose careers in retail/community pharmacy, while the remainder go for hospital pharmacy, and to a lesser extent industry, followed by academia (Sosabowski and Gard, 2008).…”