New opportunities within the health care sector

Collaboration between the Department of Health and MCAST results in new health and social care courses

The Department of Health and MCAST will be strengthening and extending their existing collaborations to provide students with the relevant training opportunities and work experience required to achieve successful careers in the health sector.

This commitment was confirmed during the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Department of Health and the College’s Institute of Applied Science, on Wednesday 13 June 2012, at the Ministry for Health, the Elderly and Community Care, in Valletta. As part of this new collaboration, the two sides have already concluded an extensive consultation process to launch a new two-year full-time course aimed at preparing students for a career as a paramedic aide. The role of a paramedic aide is to assist various health professionals by performing clinical and administrative activities, which will contribute to the optimisation of interventions and of the overall service delivery in the health sector.

Students who take up this new MQF Level 4 course, the MCAST-BTEC Extended Diploma in Health and Social Care (Health Studies), which begins in October, will benefit from an extensive work experience programme within various departments of the Ministry of Health, the Elderly and Community Care. These experiences will encourage students to learn about the different environments where they can work as paramedic aides. Eventually, the students focus their studies with specialised theoretical and practical training related to their preferred area.

The new agreement between MCAST and the Ministry was signed by Dr. Natasha Azzopardi Muscat, MHEC Chief Medical Officer, and Prof. Maurice Grech, MCAST Principal and CEO. It provides for ongoing collaborations to identify training and skilling gaps within the health industry, to increase the number of specialist MCAST vocational programmes related to the health sector, to cater for new specialist areas such as podiatry, pre-hospital, physiotherapy and occupational therapy, and to strengthen the quality assurance mechanisms of the vocational practice modules that relate to these specialist strands. The Ministry and the College will also work together to promote these careers and to encourage stronger student participation in these courses.

[Minister for Health, the Elderly and Community Care Hon Joe Cassar thanked the representatives of both MCAST and the Department of Health who have been meeting and fine tuning the MOU for the past months.  The Minister pointed out that this is where the Governments policy as regards Health and Education are converging, with the final result being a strengthened Health Care system from which the main beneficiary will be the patient.

“We continuously monitor our services across the health care system.  This provides us with a clear picture of what systems and processes are working and what can be improved.  Human Resources are of course crucial for such systems to work and being able to identify a need allow us to provide to satisfy it in a convenient manner.  You are today witnessing the result of such monitoring and collaboration with an educational system that is providing the system with well trained health care workers.”  The Minister pointed out that health care services are on the increase, and health care workers are being given more possibilities to specialise in specific areas.  This not only provides a good possibility of employment but also the opportunity to further invest in a health care career.

Prof. Grech explained that MCAST’s collaboration with various sectors of the Maltese economy and with major employers is the cornerstone of all the College’s full-time and part-time courses. The new MCAST Institute of Applied Science has quickly adapted to this tradition. It has already consulted various industries, including the healthcare services, the pharmaceutical and the environmental sectors, to provide new training opportunities for Maltese learners. In this case, MCAST is working with the Ministry, the largest healthcare employer in Malta, to offer students a rewarding learning experience for the acquisition of the relevant qualifications and skills to succeed in this sector and to provide well-trained workers who can effectively contribute to the ongoing improvement of healthcare services in Malta. He noted that this collaboration has already borne fruit for MCAST’s prospective students, who will be able to apply for the new extended diploma course in a few weeks’ time, when the College starts receiving applications for its 161 full-time courses beginning in October.

“This course also contributes to our efforts to strengthen the value of apprenticeships, placements, and other workplace training opportunities within our courses. We are currently working on the introduction of new systems, in collaboration with the Employment and Training Corporation and the industry, whereby employers are provided with a schedule of processes and tasks which students would be obliged to experience during the work training. This will ensure that our students are highly prepared to swiftly adapt to and succeed in their place of work, as soon as they complete their studies,” Prof. Grech concluded.

 

More details about the new Extended Diploma course and MCAST’s other 160 full-time programmes is available in the new MCAST 2012/2013 Full-time Courses Prospectus, which can be viewed online on www.mcast.edu.mt. Prospective students are also invited to collect their copy of the Prospectus, and learn more about MCAST campus life during the MCAST Expo, between 23 and 26 June, at the MCAST Main Campus, Paola. Contact the College on information@mcast.edu.mt or 2398 7100 for more information.