Robert Gordon UniversitySTRATEGIC STATEMENT:

Health and Wellbeing

RGU’S Mission and Vision

RGU’s mission is to transform

people and communities. It

does this by ensuring that our

discovery of knowledge and our

dissemination of scholarship have

the greatest possible economic,

social and cultural impact.

RGU’s vision is to be recognised, in Scotland and beyond, as a distinctive university leading and shaping the debate on the future of higher education and placing students at the centre of the education it offers. It will be known for the impact of its teaching, scholarship and translational research, the employability of its graduates, its influence in the region and nation, its growing global profile, and its strong interdisciplinary focus on a small number of key questions and issues of concern to the local and global community. It will achieve its goals in partnership with academic, voluntary, public and business organisations that share its ideals and aspirations.

RGU’s VISION FOR HEALTH

AND WELLBEING is to be

recognised for its high quality

programmes of teaching and

research, focusing on practice and

inter-professional working.

RGU: Health and Wellbeing

RGU enjoys a long-established reputation for producing graduates with fit-for-purpose skills and knowledge, highly regarded by employers in the health and social care sectors.

We have a comprehensive portfolio of professional qualifying degrees and continuing professional development (CPD) in nursing, midwifery, pharmacy, the allied health professions, Health Improvement, Social Work and sports and exercise science. Nearly 6,000 individuals are undertaking study in these areas, both on and off campus.

Our provision of courses is underpinned by a commitment to the delivery of high quality, innovative teaching and learning, in turn supported by a high level of expertise in the use of technology, e-learning and simulation.

This approach has resulted in strong and consistent levels of student satisfaction as well as high levels of graduate employment: in 2010/11, more than 90 per cent of students with a first degree from the Faculty of Health and Social Care were in employment within six months of graduating, with five per cent undertaking further study.

Our strengths: today and tomorrow

RGU possesses a unique and complementary range of professions within its health and social care portfolio.

Our Faculty of Health and Social Care – the largest provider of diversified social work education in Scotland – is well known for its practice-focused approach to education, for being at the forefront of non-medical prescribing education and for its significant expertise in occupational health. It is the regional provider for nursing and midwifery education and is rapidly taking a lead in terms of midwifery research, having appointed the first Professor of Clinical Midwifery in Scotland.

The faculty influences policy at a national level, not least through its partnership in the Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland (Celcis). The unique contribution the university makes in terms of the education of health and social care professionals means it is ideally placed to help strategic partners achieve the integration of health and social care and other related policy drivers.

The faculty is developing a reputation for using simulation within all of its health and social care professional qualifying courses. This practice, including the involvement of volunteer patients, provides students with an optimal level of practical experience, allowing them to gain in confidence and develop their professional skills to a high level. We are clear that this dimension of our provision contributes to the high level of employability of our graduates.

The faculty also enjoys a national and international reputation for its approach to inter-professional education which involves nine different professions, including medicine.

Our strong focus on health improvement and promotion is evident in the health promotion elements embedded within all of our undergraduate allied health profession courses, and a unique postgraduate provision that combines health promotion with public health. Leading by example RGU became the first university in Scotland to gain recognition as a ‘Healthy University’ through which we will create a learning environment and organisational culture that enhances the health, well-being and sustainability of its community and enables people to achieve their full potential.

The sustained success of the Faculty of Health and Social Care is due in part to our very strong networks and collaboration with strategic partners, including the NHS, local authorities, Police Scotland , the third sector, the Institute of Remote Health Care (IRHC) and, increasingly, the oil and gas sector.

Strategy

Our primary aim is to maintain and enhance all of our existing strengths, and continue to ensure that all our graduates demonstrate patient safety and person-centred compassionate care as central themes of their safe and effective practice.

We will ensure that our existing high quality of provision, particularly in relation to practice-focused activity and inter-professional working, is maintained and enhanced through further innovation in teaching and learning to encompass these key professional attributes.

We will maintain a learning and development environment in which our students develop portfolios of knowledge and competencies that will set them apart in their profession.

Actions

Our ambition is to play a leading role, in the UK and internationally, in developing remote health care: in ensuring that the health needs of those working in remote environments are met by practitioners who have the relevant knowledge and skills. We will achieve this by using the professional expertise of our academic and research staff to lead in the development of CPD provision and related consultancy, underpinned by remote health care research and tailored for remote health care practitioners.

Working with strategic partners – including the Institute of Remote Health Care (IRHC), NHS Grampian, the Scottish Royal Colleges and Oil & Gas UK’s Health Committee – we aim to influence and inform a key process: defining the competence levels recognised as essential for offshore medics and other healthcare practitioners working in remote and hostile environments in the UK oil and gas sector and internationally.

A Centre for Remote Health Care Research will be established to support the identification and development of these key competencies and, more strategically, to define this clinical speciality. This work will shape the educational landscape, ultimately enhancing clinical assessment, decision making, the use of tele-health and other related skills in remote environments.

We aim to lead the way in developing learning experiences that will equip health care practitioners with the required competencies to operate in a range of remote environments. We will also explore methods of maintaining these skills over time through the development of innovative teaching and learning practices, including simulation and use of virtual environments supported by our e-learning advisers.

Working in partnership with the IRHC, stakeholders such as Oil and Gas UK and the relevant Royal Colleges provide leadership in the:

• future development of remote health care practice as a speciality

• provision of the first international occupational medicine course.

Harnessing the professional expertise of our academic staff, we will develop RGU:Wellness – a high quality occupational health service that will provide a unique and effective offering for companies primarily – but not exclusively – in the oil and gas sector.

RGU:Wellness is a distinctive concept: a specialist service that takes the form of a ‘back to work’ one-stop shop.

It will mitigate the economic costs of staff absence from work as well as the impact of ill health on productivity: a co-ordinated service designed to reduce extended absences and manage return-to-work support more effectively to help minimise further time off.

Further, it will help companies to meet the ever-changing obligations presented by employee wellbeing legislation.

More broadly, an effective programme of health improvement and timely intervention practices can not only benefit individual organisations, but help to mitigate the prevailing skills shortage in the oil and gas industry by enhancing attendance levels.

Combining our specialist facilities and the professional knowledge of our academic staff, RGU:Wellness can provide a specialist diagnostic and fitness testing service to support effective treatment and assessment of fitness for work. It will encompass expertise in health improvement, ergonomics, nutrition advice, personal training and stress reduction to constitute a definitive workforce health programme. Links with RGU:Sport further enhance the efficacy of these interventions through the provision of fitness and self management programmes.

This strategic statement is part of a series which provides information on the university’s priorities in particular areas and reflects the university’s strategy: A Clear Future for a leading university in a new era. It has been developed after a period of consultation which involved meetings with a series of external stakeholders.

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