Graduate podiatrists need the right skills to succeed in the workplace but, until now, there’s been no specific tool to assess their work readiness.
Professor Shannon Munteanu is leading research to change that.
“In healthcare professions, work readiness is crucial as it directly impacts job performance, satisfaction, engagement and retention. Ensuring graduates are work-ready is vital for education providers, who must align their curricula with employer expectations and professional standards,” he says.
Yet in podiatry, work-readiness measurement is still in its infancy.
“There are not many questionnaires specifically developed to measure the work readiness of graduate podiatrists,” he explains.
One existing tool, the Work-Readiness Scale for Allied Health Professionals (WRS-AH) was designed to help allied health graduates assess their own work readiness. However, it lacks specific input from podiatry employers.
To address this gap, Professor Munteanu worked with podiatry employers to identify 39 essential capabilities for new graduates.
These span a wide range of areas including foundational skills like literacy, numeracy and communication; adaptive and collaborative capabilities such as teamwork and interpersonal skills; technical knowledge and professional standards; employability; and podiatry-specific competencies.
Professor Munteanu says the findings of the study have the potential to inform the creation of a podiatry-specific graduate employer work-readiness tool.
“This tool could be used by employers to provide feedback to podiatry education program providers as well as new graduates in the workplace.”
“It could serve as a framework for employers to identify, communicate with, and support the capability development of new podiatry graduates. It may also support regulatory bodies in their review and revision of podiatry standards.”
Ultimately, Professor Munteanu hopes the research will enhance the work-readiness of podiatry graduates, optimise work performance, satisfaction, and engagement.
