Developing generic skills for future health professionals: student and faculty perceptions of a recovery college curriculum and courses

Purpose As health-care systems worldwide grapple with complex challenges such as limited resources, qualified personnel shortages and rapid technological advancements, there is an urgent need for educational transformation in health-care professions. This urgency arises from the necessity for health-care professionals to evolve beyond traditional roles and acquire essential generic skills such as adaptative, epistemic, relational, ethical and citizenship skills – areas identified as gaps in conventional university curricula. This study aims to investigate the potential of the recovery college (RC) model, integrated into a Canadian university’s health-care curriculum, to address these gaps. Design/methodology/approach Through qualitative group interviews with eight students and three faculty members and subsequent descriptive content analysis, the authors explored the perceived outcomes of this model. Findings The authors discerned 15 themes within the five core categories of generic skills (epistemic, ethical, relational, adaptative and citizenship skills), with “experiential knowledge acquisition” central to the training input and other significant themes including “ethical sensitivity,” “collaborative communication,” “self-care” and “open-mindedness to diversity.” The findings highlight the RC model’s potential in fostering these crucial skills among future health-care professionals and challenging prevailing epistemic injustices in health care. Research limitations/implications Further investigations are needed to understand the long-term effects of this model on health-care practice and to explore its potential integration into wider health-care education programs. Originality/value This study enriches understanding of the RC model’s role in health-care education, thereby proposing a significant shift toward more inclusive and effective health-care professional training.