Chosen Career Path Research Articles

Prospective healthcare students' perspectives and attitudes on pharmacy as a chosen career path

BackgroundWith the national increase in the number of colleges and schools of pharmacy as well as the decreased pharmacy school applicant pool in recent years, pharmacy school enrollment challenges are at the forefront of issues facing pharmacy programs today. Factors that can influence a candidate's likelihood to pursue pharmacy school are important to evaluate. Recent studies assessing factors that motivate potential pre-health candidates to pursue pharmacy school or other healthcare careers are limited. ObjectiveTo describe prospective candidates' perspectives and attitudes toward pharmacy as a career pathway and assess factors that motivate or deter them from pursuing pharmacy as a career and from considering a specific pharmacy school. MethodThe study was cross-sectional and used an online data collection form distributed via the Qualtrics platform from October 4, 2022 through October 12, 2022 using the social media platform Reddit. Reddit has hundreds of subcommunities known as subreddits, that allow for exchange of ideas and discussion regarding various topics. This social media platform is commonly used by pre-health students to discuss career options. The survey consisted of 28 items and two domains, demographics and prospective healthcare students' understanding of responsibilities of pharmacists and their overall perspective on pharmacy as a profession. The survey was targeted toward anyone with an intention of pursuing a health science degree or career. ResultFour hundred participants completed the survey. Participants were mainly Caucasian, male, and with a mean age of 25 years. This study assessed prospective candidates' perspectives and attitudes toward pharmacy as a career pathway, appealing and unappealing characteristics about pursuing a career in the field of pharmacy, and factors that motivate or deter candidates from pursuing pharmacy. While 68 % of the participants had heard that career choices are vast and vary in the field of pharmacy, most still had concerns about the pharmacy field being heavily saturated and lack of job opportunities after graduation. Almost 60 % of responders gained information about pharmacy programs through social media platforms. The North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination pass rate, postgraduate residencies/fellowships, program duration and program reputation were among the top factors in choosing a pharmacy program. ConclusionMany survey participants had heard that there are a variety of job opportunities in the field of pharmacy, but the majority had heard that the pharmacy field is heavily saturated and that there are lack of opportunities after graduation. Most responders gained information through social media platforms. For prospective pharmacy school candidates, NAPLEX pass rate, number of graduates matched with PGY1 residencies and fellowships, and duration and reputation of the program seems to be among the most important factors in choosing a pharmacy program. Factors that prospective candidates consider when selecting a pharmacy program and the means they use to research about programs can be important considerations for pharmacy programs recruitment. Awareness of the preferences and baseline knowledge of candidates about the field of pharmacy can aid in developing targeted recruitment strategies and informing decision-making in pharmacy programs and recruitment efforts.

Launching an International Community of Practice in Hematology/Oncology Medical Education.

A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. While the field of hematology/oncology has historically prioritized clinical care and biomedical research, medical education has received increasing attention within hematology/oncology in recent years. In 2018, ASCO launched the Education Scholars Program to train hematology/oncology clinicians in the science of teaching and learning. However, the number of hematology/oncology educators nationally and internationally far exceeds the capacity of the Education Scholars Program to train them. In addition, hematology/oncology educators often lack sufficient mentorship and guidance at their own institutions to pursue their chosen career path effectively. To ensure high-quality clinical care and research for generations to come, attention must be paid to improving support for hematology/oncology educators. Therefore, supported by ASCO, we developed an international medical education (Med Ed) CoP for hematology/oncology educators with the purpose of providing them with support, community, mentorship, resources, and scholarly opportunities in medical education. In this article, we describe the development of the Med Ed CoP using a three-stage framework (Establish-Grow-Sustain) including successes, challenges, and reflections. By supporting the needs of hematology/oncology educators, the Med Ed CoP will serve as a home for all who contribute to the field of hematology/oncology.

Student-Centric Training and Placement Application

Abstract: In the fast-paced and competitive landscape of today's job market the significance of comprehensive training and placement programs for students cannot be overstated. As a bridge between academic preparation and professional success.this training and placement platform plays and pivotal role in equipping students with the the necessary skills, knowledge, and confidence to thrive in their chosen career path with particular emphasis on training components and their impact on students' development and employability. Nowadays a recruiters seek candidates possessing not only academic qualifications but also practical skills and industry-specific competencies

Success Stories of Non-ABM Accountancy Graduates

The study aimed to explore the experiences and journeys of non-ABM students who pursued a Bachelor of Science in Accountancy program and eventually became successful Certified Public Accountants (CPAs). Following Polkinghorne's (1998) Narrative Mode of Analysis, a qualitative narrative inquiry approach was employed. Three participants were purposively selected based on the criteria of being non-ABM senior high school graduates, having completed a BS Accountancy program, and currently holding a CPA license. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured face-to-face and phone interviews. The interviews explored the participants' motivations for choosing the accountancy program, their college experiences, challenges faced, preparations for the CPA licensure examination, and insights gained throughout their journeys. The study revealed that while the participants initially struggled due to a lack of background knowledge in accounting, they eventually adapted and succeeded through determination, hard work, and perseverance. The findings highlight the importance of passion, commitment, and proper guidance in achieving academic and professional goals, even when facing challenges stemming from misalignment between pre-university education and chosen career paths.

Success Stories of Non-ABM Accountancy Graduates

The study aimed to explore the experiences and journeys of non-ABM students who pursued a Bachelor of Science in Accountancy program and eventually became successful Certified Public Accountants (CPAs). Following Polkinghorne's (1998) Narrative Mode of Analysis, a qualitative narrative inquiry approach was employed. Three participants were purposively selected based on the criteria of being non-ABM senior high school graduates, having completed a BS Accountancy program, and currently holding a CPA license. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured face-to-face and phone interviews. The interviews explored the participants' motivations for choosing the accountancy program, their college experiences, challenges faced, preparations for the CPA licensure examination, and insights gained throughout their journeys. The study revealed that while the participants initially struggled due to a lack of background knowledge in accounting, they eventually adapted and succeeded through determination, hard work, and perseverance. The findings highlight the importance of passion, commitment, and proper guidance in achieving academic and professional goals, even when facing challenges stemming from misalignment between pre-university education and chosen career paths.

Gender, flexibility and workforce in the NHS: A qualitative study.

Data from the General Medical Council show that the number of female doctors registered to practise in the UK continues to grow at a faster rate than the number of male doctors. Our research critically discusses the impact of this gender-based shift, considering how models of medical training are still ill-suited to supporting equity and inclusivity within the workforce, with particular impacts for women despite this gender shift. Drawing on data from our research project Mapping underdoctored areas: the impact of medical training pathways on NHS workforce distribution and health inequalities, this paper explores the experiences of doctors working in the NHS, considering how policies around workforce and beyond have impacted people's willingness and ability to continue in their chosen career path. There is clear evidence that women are underrepresented in some specialties such as surgery, and at different career stages including in senior leadership roles, and our research focuses on the structural factors that contribute to reinforcing these under-representations. Medical education and training are known to be formative points in doctors' lives, with long-lasting impacts for NHS service provision. By understanding in detail how these pathways inadvertently shape where doctors live and work, we will be able to consider how best to change existing systems to provide patients with timely and appropriate access to healthcare. We take a cross-disciplinary theoretical approach, bringing historical, spatiotemporal and sociological insights to healthcare problems. Here, we draw on our first 50 interviews with practising doctors employed in the NHS in areas that struggle to recruit and retain doctors, and explore the gendered nature of career biographies. We also pay attention to the ways in which doctors carve their own career pathways out of, or despite of, personal and professional disruptions.

Choice of Career Gap Among Adolescents with Disabilities

Various initiatives have been implemented to enhance the circumstances of adolescents with disabilities in their chosen professions. These efforts encompass the development of policies to direct Nigeria's educational system in supporting students with disabilities in pursuing jobs that align with their specific impairments. Furthermore, in order to successfully overcome the hurdles related to selecting a career. Several seminars and conferences were held in Nigeria to discuss the importance of career education in promoting the participation of adolescents with disabilities in career development. The discussion explicitly focused on theories of career choice and the challenges that adolescents with disabilities face in their chosen career paths. These challenges include teachers' lack of knowledge and skills in planning and utilizing career education experiences, a shortage of teachers, and inadequate resources for implementation. When making decisions about Career Education for teenagers with disabilities, it is important to carefully explore suitable techniques that take into account the specific obstacles they face.

JobEdKG: An uncertain knowledge graph-based approach for recommending online courses and predicting in-demand skills based on career choices

Modern job markets often require an intricate combination of multi-disciplinary skills or specialist and technical knowledge, even for entry-level positions. Such requirements pose increased pressure on students, new graduates, and job seekers to find suitable sources of information to enhance their employability. Unlike standard competence management systems, this paper presents JobEdKG, which helps job seekers from various backgrounds choose online courses based on their prospective careers in addition to predicting different skills that may be required in their chosen career path. While existing solutions focus on internal institutional data, such as previous student experiences and a fixed set of skills provided by curated datasets, JobEdKG considers external data, recommending online courses that best cover the knowledge and skills required by selected job roles, in addition to extracting and predicting skills of that particular job roles. To achieve this, we first extract skills from job postings and online courses. These skills are linked to job titles, online courses, and other concepts in order to create a knowledge graph (KG). We assign an uncertainty score to each fact in the KG based on the prevalence of the fact in the source data (i.e. job listings and online courses), which results in an uncertain KG (UKG). Finally, we model the constructed UKG in order to infer different relations between the different concepts. The code and the data are available on our GitHub repository (https://github.com/team611/JobEd) and a user interface to browse the KG is available at (http://jobed.datanets.org/).

A Study on Career Planning Towards Daily Fresh Fruits India Pvt Ltd., to Namakkal

Career planning is an ongoing process through which an individual sets career goals and identifies the means to achieve them. The process by which individuals plan their life's work is referred to as career planning. "Career planning Is a process of systematically matching career goals and individual capabilities with opportunities for their fulfillment." Self-assessment is necessary to understand one's capabilities and drawbacks. The various career options should be explored in detail to find a fit between one's abilities and the opportunities provided by a career option. It involves continuous learning and improvement to build and growth in the chosen career path.

Nursing Leadership: A Concept Analysis

Background: Nursing is a demanding career that needs strong role models and mentors who can motivate and inspire their colleagues. Aims: The study's overarching objective was to conduct a conceptual review of nursing administration. Design: Concept analysis using (Walker and Avant’s, 2005) concept analysis method, and review of the literature was conducted using several databases, “nursing leadership”, “nursing” & “leadership”, “nurse” & “leadership” were searched as keywords. Data sources: PubMed, CINAHL and Google Scholar. Result: Leadership attributes in nursing were found in this study as self-improvement, teamwork, nursing excellence, creative problem solution, and sway. As with any profession, nursing leadership is predicated on the individual's development, the establishment of trustworthy relationships, and the absolute necessity of the position itself. Many positive outcomes emerged, including higher levels of nursing productivity, the creation of a more cooperative workplace, and increased satisfaction with one has chosen career path. Conclusion: The findings from this research demonstrate the efficacy of nurse leadership. The results also provide theoretical backing for the contention that nurses of all stripes would benefit from taking leadership training.

Regression analysis of the gender wage gap in academia

According to the Institute for Women’s Policy, women in the United States working in the state of Louisiana earn sixty-nine cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts. This is a substantial discrepancy and has been used as a call for action. However, what is really behind this variance in pay between women and men? For a large part, it is the types of careers that men and women choose to enter. A more valid comparison between men’s and women’s pay is to look at pay differences within the same chosen career path. This study looks at faculty pay at a regional university to ascertain whether there is evidence of a difference in pay between women and men in academia. This paper’s results show that once the area of specialty, rank, and years of experience are considered, male faculty actually, on average, earn less than their female counterparts.

Women’s Agency in Action: Higher Education and Career Paths for Young Muslim Women in Indonesia

This article is an analysis of narratives of young Indonesian Muslim women to explore their behavior and thoughts on being well-educated women in their chosen career path. It examines women’s thoughts on completing higher education and their lifelong study; whether pursuing a career or being a full-time mom. Having the capability to choose the career they want and implementing the beliefs of Islam’s teaching are attributed as their main responsibilities for being a real woman in this world and hereafter. The biographical interpretive method is engaged in this study to more deeply explain and explore the main idea selected. The research findings show that higher education allows women to become a new version of themselves. Obviously it can be said that education is the key for the next, better, future generations of Indonesia.

The Changed Reality of Being a Catholic Priest in Today’s Ireland

The Changed Reality of Being a Catholic Priest in Today’s Ireland John Littleton (bio) Setting the scene I was ordained a Catholic priest on 8 June 1986. That is nearly forty years ago, indeed probably half my lifetime. Over the decades since then, my personal reflections along with my conversations with family members, colleagues and parishioners have persuaded me that the experience of being a priest in Ireland in 2022 differs greatly from that of the 1980s and earlier times. It is frequently said that change in the hierarchical Church happens incredibly slowly, usually occurring over centuries, as the Church trundles along rather like a huge millwheel moving almost undetectably. Irrespective of the pace of change within the Church, the past half century has witnessed a major transformation in how the institutional Church in particular and Catholicism in general are perceived in Ireland; the reality is that contemporary Irish society, similar to other Western democracies, is becoming increasingly secular, individualistic and materialistic. Anecdotal testimony One of my abiding memories is that, within a few weeks of ordination, I was asked to help with the hearing of confessions at one of the large Redemptorist novenas (nine consecutive days of prayer) in honour of Our Lady of Perpetual Help that were common at that time in various locations around the country.1 The availability of confession (the sacrament of reconciliation) for novena attendees, which was provided by a sizable team of confessors, was a noteworthy part of each novena session. Participants were encouraged to use that opportunity to express repentance for their sins, receive God’s forgiveness and renew their commitment to the principles and values of the Gospel. A recurring phrase in the standard list of novena announcements each day was, ‘Confessions are being heard before, during and after each session!’2 What astonished me most during my first experience of hearing confessions [End Page 249] was the large number of people who specifically asked how they should vote in the upcoming referendum on 26 June 1986 that would propose an amendment to remove the prohibition on divorce from Bunreacht na hÉireann (Constitution of Ireland). Some of them did not desire the sacrament; they simply wanted to be told how to vote. Many of them were well educated and worked in professional settings where they made important daily decisions that had serious consequences for business, finance and people. Yet when it came to deciding how to vote on an issue that had significant moral and social implications, they abdicated their responsibility as citizens in a democracy and expected the priest to tell them what to do. It was as though their faith development had ceased at the end of their secondary schooling, although their expertise and competence in other capacities had continued to develop according to their chosen career paths. Thankfully, although inexperienced, I had sufficient common sense to refuse to tell them how to vote. I told them that they needed to vote in accordance with their conscience and that I would answer any questions about the Church’s teaching on conscience, marriage and divorce, but that it would be wrong for me to tell them how to vote. Some penitents were displeased with my stance and threatened to complain to the priest in charge. Nevertheless, I insisted that it would be improper for me to tell them how to vote.3 Afterwards, I discovered that the other confessors on the team had much the same experience as me. This demonstrated to me that there was a perception among Catholics that priests – in addition to bishops – had the right and the duty to inform people how they should act in fundamentally important areas of life. About thirty years later, following the 1986 unsuccessful referendum to remove the prohibition on divorce from the constitution, my experience was that the perception of priests’ rights and duties had changed completely, especially in the lead-up to more recent referenda. In the 2015 ‘Marriage Equality’ referendum, the proposal was that marriage between two people be recognised regardless of the sex of the partners.4 Then three years later, in 2018, the ‘Repeal the Eighth’ referendum proposed that the 1983 Eighth Amendment to...

I did not have a colleague who immediately understood why it was so important that my Indian family were supportive of my chosen career path…

I did not have a colleague who immediately understood why it was so important that my Indian family were supportive of my chosen career path…

‘They Change Our Lives More than We Change Them’: Young Adults’ Perspectives on Relationships with Autistic Siblings

ABSTRACT Although sibling relationships are significant and enduring throughout the lifespan, research concerning relationships among young adults and their autistic siblings is scarce. The goal of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of multiple features of the sibling relationship from the perspectives of young adults with autistic siblings. Eleven participants completed a semi-structured interview focused on sibling communication, shared activities, family impact, benefits, and personal influence of having an autistic sibling. Qualitative analysis of participant perspectives yielded themes including Personal Qualities and Perspectives, Barriers to Communication, and Family Challenges and Limitations. Over half of the participants shared that their sibling influenced their chosen career path. Results are discussed in relation to previous literature, with an emphasis on the importance of acknowledging and supporting relationships between autistic individuals and their siblings.

Breaking the silos, stopping the spread: an interview with Jyoti Joshi.

Breaking the silos, stopping the spread: an interview with Jyoti Joshi.

Scope for change.

Scope for change.

275 Undergraduate Career Aspirations in Northern Ireland - a National Qualitative Study

Abstract Introduction Undergraduate career aspirations are accurately translated to chosen career paths. Understanding what influences these decisions has implications for future workforce planning. The aim of this study was to identify future career intentions in Northern Irish Medical Students. Method An anonymous voluntary survey consisting of binominal, Likert and free text responses was distributed to all medical students registered at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). Data was collected over 6 weeks in April-May 2021. The primary outcome was future career aspiration and secondary outcome was the reported attrition rate from medicine. Local Ethical approval was obtained. Results 202 responses were received (Response rate 15%). Two thirds (n = 135) were female. One third of respondents remained undecided about their future career choice, with senior students demonstrating greatest certainty in future career choice. Respondents were least likely to choose a career in Surgery (33%). Factors influencing these decisions were a lack of academic interest in the speciality, perceived workload, and the length of the training scheme. 10% of respondents were unsure or unlikely to pursue a career in Medicine after they graduated. Thematic analysis demonstrated, fear of making mistakes, poor work life balance and poor working environments as reasons for leaving medicine. Conclusions Uncertainty over future career intention remains common with surgery the least popular speciality. The rate of potential attrition is concerning which warrants further investigation.

Making Mathematics Relevant: an Examination of Student Interest in Mathematics, Interest in STEM Careers, and Perceived Relevance

Community college students face difficulties in mathematics courses and may not understand the relevance of the topics they are learning to their intended career. When such connections are not made, mathematics courses can become barriers to pursuit of careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). In the present study, we assessed student interest in mathematics and various STEM career areas and students’ knowledge of ways mathematics was involved in STEM careers in order to better understand how these variables are related. We discovered that interest in mathematics predicted interest in many, but not all, categories of STEM and STEM-related careers. We also assessed how deeply the student was engaged with their current career pathway, and how this related to other variables. We found that students’ depth of interest in their chosen career path was only associated with mathematics interest for some STEM careers. Finally, students’ perceptions of how mathematics was used in their chosen career area predicted their interest in mathematics, and their interest in some STEM career areas.

Mathematics in the Humanities: A Survey of Two Courses to Address Math Appreciation in Students

Mathematics is not just the queen of the sciences; it permeates through art, commerce, and in fact, every aspect of modern life. However, while we as mathematicians see beauty in the mathematical way of thinking and problem-solving, our students tend to think of mathematics as a set of rules and abstract computations. Our pleasure of doing mathematics usually does not transfer over to our students. In this paper, we describe two liberal arts general education courses which seek to develop a broad appreciation of mathematics for students who may not require any technical mathematics course for their academic major or chosen career path. We present mathematics as it relates to everyday life, with the goal of improving student appreciation of mathematics.