Stay and stay well: implementing integrated care into higher education

Background: Supporting students undertaking professional courses in health and social care prepare for the realities of integrated care is essential to retention of a highly skilled integrated workforce. Globally, it is estimated that there will be a shortfall of 10 million healthcare workers worldwide by 2030 (1). At the same time, ethnic diversity and an ageing population will require inclusive person-centred care. What is the issue: While satisfying, working in the helping professions is emotionally challenging and for students’ these challenges are often under-estimated. Some students struggle through their studies with many failing to complete and others drop out in the early years of their careers, with stress and lack of support cited as the key drivers for exit. This leads to an endless cycle of recruitment to meet demands for the ever-growing need for integrated care. What is the intervention: To address this issue, the University Bedfordshire, England has introduced a framework that aims to prepare health and social care students for delivering integrated care. It draws on curriculum principles identified via Barraclough et al.’s scoping review of education, training and workforce development in integrated care to create the conditions for integrated working (2). The approach is based on the “student lifecycle”, capturing student experience from preparing for university to final qualification and beyond into professional life. It is organised around the themes of begin, belong, thrive and succeed. At each stage, incremental support is provided via initiatives that aim to promote self-confidence, emotional resilience and inter-professional reflexivity. The framework is designed to enable students to successfully: •Begin: by fostering self-belief, self-confidence and curiosity pre-entry via a culturally competent outreach programme that engages diverse communities and prospective students about the benefits of a career in integrated care •Belong: at university by co-creating a new initiative with health and social care students to improve their sense of belonging to their professional courses •Thrive: through developing a thirst for inter-professional learning and self-improvement by participating in Schwartz Rounds and integrated care simulations co-developed by staff and students •Succeed: by enhancing emotional resilience via a new web application to help students and qualified staff improve their personal resilience and introducing a module on inter-professional reflective supervision along with reflective practice groups to support inter-professional reflexivity and anti-racist practice. Target audience: Universities involved in teaching and learning new and existing health and social care professionals. Learning/takeaways: Providing holistic, person-centred care can be both rewarding and emotionally challenging and, given international challenges in recruitment and retention the framework may resonate beyond England. Next steps: While evaluation is in its early stages, it is hoped that the approach will increase diversity, reduce attrition during training and promote greater inter-professional empathy, communication and collaboration for effective inter-professional practice to enable students stay and stay well in integrated care. References 1.World Economic Forum. Global health and healthcare strategic outlook: shaping the future. Geneva; 2023 2.Barraclough F, et al. Workforce development in integrated care: a scoping review. Int J Integr Care. 2021;21(4).