Clases de Competencias

‘Super-human’ attributes

Many participants described the accelerated graduates in positive terms in relation to their personalities and characteristics. The term ‘super-human’ was developed in response to the way in which participants viewed the accelerated graduates’ ability to study what they considered to be an intense and in-depth course. It became a central tenet to this superordinate theme as the analysis showed that it encompassed many differing elements of these graduates’ characteristics and attributes. The term ‘super-human’ appeared to be said in awe and could therefore be taken as a compliment. When asked to describe the accelerated graduates one participant described them as ‘a different calibre to a lot of people’ who were ‘super people [laughs]’. Another described them as ‘super-intelligent... [in the shortened] timescale to learn everything that you need to learn and learn how to apply it’, (Participant 2: line 119-121). This suggests some connection between the super-human skills and the time to complete the shortened pre-registration course. The description of super- human abilities appeared to arise from the participants’ beliefs that it would need to take a considerable intellectual ability with an ability ‘to motive themselves [erm], and be flexible about how they can approach learning’ (Participant 7: line 715-722). Together with a high level of motivation ‘to take in the amount of information that they have to take in the time that they’ve got’ (Participant 1: line 677-678), be able to learn, comprehend, assimilate and implement all that they considered was necessary to learn to gain the qualification for the licence to practice in the two-year course. This was supported by Bernadette Waters, Senior Lecturer in occupational therapy, who stated that for an accelerated course to be successful ‘it would require a special student with enormous capacity for hard work, intellectual rigour and speed of ingestion’ (Waters, 2000, p501). Of note it directly contrasts the focus group findings from Halkett and McLafferty (2006, p164) whose students nurses perceived their accelerated student counterparts as ‘cheating’ or ‘getting an easy ride’. Equally, the analogy

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with the fast food retailer creating the ‘McDonalds of higher education’ is also rebuffed, (Traub, 1997, p121). Instead, Participant 12 also believed that they ‘must be exceptional people to be able to go away and actually be that … focused to do that, (Participant 12: line 649-652).

Very many participants spoke openly of how they viewed the difficulty and complexity of the new course:

they get the two years and it’s hard work for them, you know, and they’ve come through it, they’ve done the placements, you know, it’s not an easy course by any stretch of the imagination, they have to work very very hard and you see that every time that you see them coming in as students so, you know, if they have managed to get through the course and actually have completed then, you know, they must have had, must have some skills that makes them prepared to come into the work place,

(Participant 12: line 472-481).

Yet participants only rarely commented on the accelerated graduates’ intellect or academic abilities as being ‘exceptional’ (Participant 12: line 650). More often they complimented them on their high levels of self-motivation, communication skills and organisational prowess.

Within interpretative phenomenological analysis the researcher must have a reflexive role as a validation in the interpretation of their participant’s perceptions and experiences (Coolican, 2004) and hence the possibility of irony should be considered. Hence, the term super-human could be some slur or could reveal a lack of understanding of the nature of the accelerated course and its provision. Perhaps there was no compliment. However, despite this reflection there was nothing in the data to suggest some ‘tongue-in-cheek’ comparison to super-people. Some participants did have concerns as will be explored later but the majority remained complimentary.

From this over-riding description the participants offered several specific characteristics and traits by which to describe the accelerated student and graduate. To be successful in their goal to be physiotherapists I was told that these individuals needed, and had, positive qualities such as: commitment, focus and direction, ‘get-up-and-go’ and an ability to ‘knuckle down’, an independent learning style, self-awareness, self-confidence, initiative and

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leadership skills. These attributes added to the participants’ sense of acceptance of the newer accelerated courses as they believed these graduates’ skills had benefited the workforce. They will be considered in turn.

Focus and direction

UK pre-registration physiotherapy training courses have, historically, been well over- subscribed and difficult to gain entry to and complex to study (Burnett, 2008). It is not uncommon that some traditionally trained graduates have long aspired to become physiotherapists from their early teenage years. However some interview participants were more likely to believe that the accelerated graduates had made a conscious and adult decision to change pathway away from the nature of their first degree towards a health-care profession. This life-changing and calculated decision seemed to be seen more positively than teenage aspiration. Indeed, some participants suggested that the accelerated group showed an additional sense of ambition:

the sort of person that takes on the Masters is somebody that’s had to sort of really sit down and think, ‘this is where I would like to see myself and this is what I need to achieve to get it’, more so than perhaps a BSc that’s come straight from school and just thought ‘ I’d like to be a physio’, erm,

I, I would just imagine that the MSc students have possibly put more, possibly put more thought into the reason that they’re going into the course in the first place,

(Participant 9: line 418-430).

This sense of ambition was supported by Harriet Feldman, Dean of the Lienhard School of Nursing at Pace University who considers her accelerated students to be ‘sophisticated consumers of higher education’ who want to reach their career objective ‘as quickly and efficiently as possible’ (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2005). As such most participants believed that:

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if you’re an accelerated graduate you’ve probably thought long and hard about whether you actually want to go back and spend two more years studying, (Participant 6: line 621-624).

This ‘long and hard’ consideration is also reflected in the literature. Such potential applicants are said to face difficult issues related to additional study as accelerated courses are considered to be highly demanding, intense studies (Rushforth, 2004). They are said to face alternative domestic pressures to the traditional school leaver and with little additional time for paid work during the course (Rushforth, 2004). Indeed, financial implications are significant as these second-degree students face additional years of study and associated costs (Halpenny, 2004). Whilst these additional pressures are genuine one could argue that this reasoned consideration later in life belittles those traditionally trained graduates who successfully implemented their own life-plan from teenage years showing their own determination (Burnett, 2008). However none of the participants spoke of this. Instead they preferred to highlight what they saw as the positives of the accelerated graduate. Indeed, one participant described the accelerated graduates as having a certain ‘mindset’ as a career choice:

so their whole mindset is ‘ I’m here to do this’ as opposed to [a traditionally trained student] that might be ‘I want to do physio but I also want to be a student’, (Participant 7: line 584-589).

According to the Oxford English Dictionary a mind-set is:

an established set of attitudes; esp. regarded as typical of a particular group’s social or cultural values; the outlook, philosophy, or valued of a person; (now also more generally) frame of mind, attitude, disposition

(Oxford University Press, 2009, no page).

In the context of this analysis the term mindset suggests a frame of mind with a sense of determination as the participants described them as having ‘made their decision’ they therefore had ‘more drive’. This was in contrast to the many participants who considered the traditionally trained students and graduates to be much more passive in their attitude and approach in very many aspects of their development and training.

I think there’s gonna be a difference between them because a traditionally trained student could come directly from school, be pressured into going to university, get their degree, get a job erm, and then just go with the flow. Whereas a, an accelerated erm, accelerated version, version? not a good word for them but (laughs), erm, the accelerated er, band five [graduate physiotherapist has] been through the, the student life already, they’ve got a commitment to the learning and to then move on and do a, a physio degree as well erm, it shows a real commitment to want to be in that area,

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(Participant 2: line 254-262).

Hence the recurrent theme of the accelerated graduates was that they had greater drive, focus and direction than their traditionally trained counterparts.

Know where they want to be

As a specific example of focus and direction several participants suggested that both these accelerated students and accelerated graduates knew why they wanted to be physiotherapists and knew which clinical or geographical areas they wanted to work in. They were thought to have had a greater career plan having ‘a better idea of where they want to go’ than the traditional graduate. This is somewhat unusual as, historically, most new graduate physiotherapists have been encouraged to gain clinical experience across a broad spectrum of clinical specialities within hospital based settings over a lengthy period of time before deciding upon their chosen speciality and field of expertise (Chartered Society of Physiotherapy 2008b; Stewart, 1998). However, unemployment difficulties in recent years amongst health-care workers, including physiotherapy (Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, 2009), have caused some graduate physiotherapists to seek alternative career pathways in- and-around physiotherapy. The introduction of the ‘Agenda for Change’ (AfC) career structure within the NHS and the introduction of the ‘NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework’ (KSF) have enabled changes to these historical employment routes for the new graduate (Skills for Health, 2009a; Skills for Health, 2009b; Department of Health, 2004). Some interview participants noticed this difference:

‘what most physiotherapists [now] want to do is to chop through their portfolio getting this piece of experience and this piece of experience’ (Participant 6: line 148-151).

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Yet Participant 11 sees a difference between the two groups. The accelerated graduates were said to be ‘a lot more focused on getting out of [rotational work] straightaway’ (Participant 11: line 665) and wanting to ‘get through and move up in their career quicker’ because they know ‘where they want to be’. (Participant 11: line 589-597). Another agreed:

so they’re usually … more focused on what they’d like to achieve- so a lot of [traditionally trained] juniors don’t necessarily know which area they’d like to specialise in but I’d say the MSc students that I’ve had have been clear from the start where they wanted to go,

(Participant 9: line 418-430).

Indeed, these career plans seemed to be based upon the content or nature of their previous degree despite the breadth of specialities within physiotherapy that is available to them:

I think there’s definitely a difference in background, a lot, erm, a lot of Masters students do come from like a sports injury, a sports erm, science, sports studies kind of background erm, so a lot of them are, maybe quite moti, maybe more motivated because they’ve had to do another degree before they’ve even got onto the course, erm, and they really have suddenly decided what they want to do, erm, some of the, a lot of them seem to be quite focused on sports injuries, and, and private practice and things like that,

(Participant 11, line: 384-385).

The sense amongst the participants was that the accelerated graduates relied upon their previous backgrounds to give them added focus and direction. In contrast traditionally trained graduates appeared to be ‘happy doing the [breadth of] rotations for longer and getting sort of the general feel [of the job]’, (Participant 11, line 589-597). Yet Participant 8 was rather more disparaging of the traditional graduates describing some of them as:

a bit more in school mode where they don’t necessarily know where they want to go with their careers and they’re kind of waiting for somebody to direct them, (Participant 8: line 93-107).

The literature offers both perspectives regarding the implementation and execution of a career plan for both accelerated and traditionally trained students. Meyer et al. (2006) used an open ended survey amongst the 67 nursing students of an accelerated baccalaureate degree at Saint Louis University, USA, and found that 69.9% already had a planned career trajectory. Additionally, it appeared from a questionnaire study that all 60 Canadian final year physiotherapy students (all of whom had previous first degrees) had career plans (Őhman et

al., 2002). Equally, 74 traditionally trained physiotherapy students at the University of Otago, New Zealand, also had career plans (Dodson et al., 2001). Nonetheless, the physiotherapy

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clinicians of this study commended the accelerated graduates for their drive and ambition whilst the traditional graduates were considered more acquiescent. However, as will be seen later the accelerated graduates’ drive was seen to have had positive and negative consequences.