Adding value to the education of nurses, midwives and operating department practitioners through a ‘life-wide’ curriculum

The University of Surrey is developing the idea of a life-wide education. The intention is to develop a not for credit personal and professional development award through which a student’s life-wide learning enterprise can be encouraged, supported, valued and publicly recognised. This paper is not intended to be a research study proving that life-wide learning is a valid concept for higher education. Rather, its intention is to stimulate thinking about a set of pedagogic ideas that may add value to our current higher education paradigm and to provide some supporting evidence of student engagement with these ideas. The initial scoping exercise surveyed 40 student nurses, midwives and operating department practitioners (ODP) to discover what they did outside their programme of study that they believe added value to their personal and professional development. The survey established that students have encountered a wide range of experiences in their lives that have impacted on their personal and professional development and strong vocational motivations have often been triggered by personal life experiences. A majority of the students surveyed indicated that they would be interested in gaining some form of university recognition for the personal development they have gained through wider life experiences if the opportunity was made available to them.