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Malaysia and UK join forces to offer healthcare courses
| Publish date | 2008-02-04 |
| Available Articles | Full articles without membership |
Masterskill College of Nursing and Health has launched a joint collaboration with Liverpool John Moores University in the UK to offer programmes at degree level.
Masterskill and LJMU will jointly offer BSc (Hons) programmes in nursing, environmental health and health care management, which will give students at the college the option of doing more semesters in Malaysia before going to LJMU.
The collaboration will also see the joint development and operation of academic programmes, distance learning options – LJMU already offers online courses – and exchange of students as well as secondment of administrative and academic personnel.
Distance learning is increasingly becoming a favoured option for those already working in healthcare who wish to develop their careers. Nursing staff shortages across the US and Canada have made it difficult for nurses to take time away from their shifts to physically attend continuing education for nursing courses.
A growing number of universities offer online undergraduate, graduate and specialised programmes enabling working nurses to further their career.
The fully-online Walden University in the US established recently an educational agreement with the Good Samaritan Hospital of Maryland, enabling Good Samaritan employees to pursue a Walden Master of Science degree in Nursing.
Kaplan University, another online institution that offers a range of nursing degrees, predicts that this sector will grow rapidly over the next decade, as demand for healthcare increases in the US.
A decade after its foundation, Masterskill has grown from a small nursing school to one of the largest private nursing and allied health colleges in the Asia-Pacific region. It offers programmes in nursing, pharmacy, healthcare, health informatics, and occupational health.
It is already in collaboration with LaTrobe University, Australia and the University of Sunderland in the UK.
The company has also achieved 100 per cent employability for all its graduates.
Masterskill CEO Edmund Sathara says: “Our graduates are in high demand by reputable hospitals. The college has always been committed to providing the best for its students and has a team dedicated to this effort.” He believes the distance learning collaboration with LJMU will help his school develop even more rapidly than it already has.
In just two years, he has transformed Masterskill by implementing various measures such as procuring study loans from various funds and revolutionising the nursing and healthcare educational delivery system. He was recently voted Malaysia’s Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year 2007.
Professor Godfrey Mazhindu, dean of the Faculty of Health and Applied Social Sciences at LJMU, said the partnership would see the two institutions working together and developing skills elements and competency aspects to meet the needs of the workplace.
“Every subject at our university, even those that are not traditionally associated with skills, now have skills as part of the curriculum,” he said.
Keywords: Malaysia, UK, healthcare, nursing, health, Liverpool, online courses, distance learning.
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