Career Planning for Everyone in the NHS

The Toolkit

Ruth Chambers

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781857756630
• eBook ISBN: 9781315358338
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

This book is for users of comparisons in health care and for researchers. More clinicians managers and patient groups are using research to make comparisons. Information technology and new databases make comparisons easier but not necessarily better. Comparisons can help us discover the causes of disease whether a treatment is effective if it is worth the cost whether a service is performing badly and the value of a health reform or policy. Comparisons can help us learn from other cultures and understand the implications for our own health services. Yet it is all too easy to misinterpret or uncritically accept a study and reach invalid conclusions. This book encourages decision-makers to make more use of comparative research but with an awareness of the limitations of comparisons. Its practical approach enables researchers to plan and carry out better comparative research and to develop new methodologies for this fast growing field of research.

1

Career planning is a must for you

Wendy Garcarz and Ruth Chambers

Career planning is the process you will go through to actively manage your career, consider your personal development needs, and decide how best you can access development opportunities. It helps you to identify the factors that are important to you in your chosen profession and build up a picture of your priorities in terms of skills, interests and what motivates you. People who have been in the same role for a while can reassess their career to date and recognise new opportunities, gaps in their knowledge or skills or experience and consider how they can meet these.

Make career planning work for you

Our tips for managing your career are:

• consider what you want or need from your career and what you can offer in return
• recognise your transferable skills and the competencies you have already developed over time
• develop one or more career goals
• be flexible about change so that you can take advantage of opportunities as they crop up
• promote an accurate profile of yourself: maximise your strengths, acknowledge your weaknesses or inexperience and what you are doing to address these
• understand the value of your contribution to others and their work programmes in various health settings or organisations
• plan for your future – never stop – even if it is to get ready for a fulfilling retirement.

Consider the changing world of work in the NHS in relation to the planning and review of your career. Your career planning needs to be done in the context of the professional climate and likely changes to the way the health service is organised and changing. For instance the current emphasis on flexible working practices means that you can combine more than one post into a portfolio career (see Chapter 6 for more on this). New information and communication technologies make it easier to work from home or travel less using email, web cams, telephone and videoconferencing etc. New technologies in the health service require people with different skills to operate them or deliver the redesigned service. Secondment opportunities are more commonplace and varied, as some short-term posts are set up to introduce the changes.

Clinical professionals working for the NHS have traditionally had predictable career pathways with clear boundaries that did not provide the flexibility or opportunity desired by many. But the need for the NHS to retain an ageing workforce has meant that employers are looking for ways to adapt jobs to match the needs or preferences of individual members of staff. A learning culture is being evolved in many trusts where professional development is valued and investments made in training and supporting staff whatever their discipline or seniority, to acquire new skills and competencies, so that they gain new qualifications and experience at all stages in their careers.

People can have more than one career in their working lifespan (although it may be in the same field such as combining being a clinician, medical author and health economist) and these changes and variety can be motivational and fulfilling.

Your healthy career

The word career sometimes has negative connotations related to ambition, overwork, poor work/life balance, stress and unhealthy competition. But career simply means a series of jobs in a profession or occupation that an individual has throughout their life. It should be about the balance between an individual’s work and their personal life and reflect their aspirations, beliefs and values. So your career should be a positive driving force in your life rather than the negative or nuisance part that gets in the way of the rest of your life (see Box 1.1).

Box 1.1: Checklist for a healthy career

• What do I want to do?
• What can I do?
• What am I going to do?

Factors to consider in choosing a career specialty or interest

When reviewing your current job or weighing up the potential for a career move, you should consider the match between you and the job as to whether:

• you have the sort of personality that fits with the requirements of the job
• you have the appropriate skills, training and experience
• you have sufficient job satisfaction and interest in your work
• you are sufficiently motivated to work effectively
• the job fits with your ethics, inner values and boundaries
• the job provides the balance you want between work and your off-duty life.

Develop one or more career goals

Having a clear idea about the direction of your career gives you the elements of choice and control. You need that overall vision. How will you know if you have achieved your career goal if you do not have a vision for the future? Identify what you are aiming for and the nature of the milestones that will describe how you are going to get there. This does not mean that you cannot change your career plan if your circumstances should change; it is essential to your success to be flexible.

Lifelong learning

You need to learn new skills, take on new knowledge, develop new behaviours and attitudes throughout your life to keep pace with life’s changes. Sorry, that basic qualification will not see you through your career these days without continuing to learn more and more … you should always be open to the next challenge. Learning should help you to relish change as it means that you will learn something new and develop as a result.

Postgraduate educational qualifications can be fitted around your regular job if you can arrange study time or opt for work-based learning. Assignments can be built into your current role and responsibilities and give added value to your practice or trust, so that you can negotiate protected time to undertake it.

Everyone working for the NHS should set out a personal educational development plan that they review each year as part of the appraisal process. Career development should be an integral part of such a plan, setting out goals for the forthcoming year and beyond, and describing realistic ways of achieving those career goals.

You cannot consider your own individual needs and plans in isolation from those of the rest of your work team or organisation, or the needs of the NHS as a whole. There needs to be an opening for such a post or the new skills you intend to develop. A successful personal development plan (PDP) must balance competing influences and pressures of service needs and NHS priorities while enabling individual staff to stay in control of the development of their careers and working lives and retain their organisation’s and colleagues’ support.

Job evaluation

The NHS job evaluation scheme helps to make sure that staff are rewarded fairly; and ensures that the NHS respects the principles of equal pay for work of equal value.¹ See Chapter 5 for more details.

Job satisfaction and career fulfilment

Job satisfaction is known to protect you from the effects of stress from work. So increasing your job satisfaction is one of the best ways to ‘stress proof yourself against the pressures and demands of a job. You will minimise the effects of the elements of the job you find more stressful if you enjoy your job, feel valued and are in control of your everyday work. Low job satisfaction can affect your performance at work – one example is the link between low job satisfaction and poor prescribing practice.^2,3

Motivation

People are motivated by different things. Money, fame, power are all key motivators. Pride, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, sloth and covetousness are all listed as prime motivators – hopefully not all of these are relevant to any great extent for you working in the NHS! Some of the best motivators for fulfilling your needs are:

• interesting and/or useful work
• sense of achievement
• responsibility
• opportunities for career progression or professional development
• gaining new skills or competencies
• sense of belonging to a directorate or practice team or the NHS.

Maslow’s hierarch...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the authors
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary of terms
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Career planning is a must for you
• Chapter 2: The nuts and bolts of career planning: a practical guide
• Chapter 3: Look in depth at your skills and strengths and where you are with your career
• Chapter 4: Effective careers information/ guidance and career counselling: how it can help you
• Chapter 5: Developing the workforce through the ‘skills escalator7 and Agenda for Change
• Chapter 6: Flexible working and portfolio careers
• Chapter 7: What now? Making the jump
• Chapter 8: Making a logical plan to develop your career
• And finally: Seven steps to getting on – your checklist
• Appendix 1: Generic careers support information for all in the NHS
• Appendix 2: Careers information for doctors
• Appendix 3: Careers information for nurses
• Appendix 4: Careers information for allied health professionals (dietitians/ physiotherapists/speech and language therapists/occupational therapists, podiatrists)
• Appendix 5: Careers information for optometrists
• Appendix 6: Careers information for pharmacists
• Appendix 7: Careers information for dentists
• Appendix 8: Careers information for managers in primary care
• Index