Report proposes ways for JYU to strengthen education in the social and health sector
The report was commissioned in early 2024 by the Board of the Ģֱ as part of its effort to strengthen the university’s educational offering. The working group that wrote the report was led by Doctor of Medicine and Surgery, Professor Jukka-Pekka Mecklin.
The need for reform is driven by national pressures for change in social and health services, including the growing labour shortage in the sector in Finland. On the basis of the report’s findings, the reforms would also support securing the social and health service system and strengthening the use of multidisciplinary work in the social and health sector.
Jari Ojala, Rector of the Ģֱ, thanks the authors of the report for their open-minded and forward-looking work.
“The proposed actions are ambitious,” Ojala says. “We will now consider all of the proposals carefully, make choices based on them and create a plan and timetable for taking the necessary actions. The aim is to begin making decisions on this issue as early as in 2025.”
New education modules proposed to fulfil need for multiprofessional competence
The report presents a range of alternatives for developing the University’s education.
The University could supplement its existing offering by adding multidisciplinary modules to degree and continuing education as well as to the selection of continuous learning. Along with students from other educational institutions, professionals in the social and health sector from all over the country could complete the modules as further training.
The education modules would also enable the University to build a new type of educational path that utilises a multidisciplinary approach in the fields of wellbeing and social and health services. The report presents twelve different development ideas as spearheads that could respond to the needs identified in the social and health sector, such as in work with families with children, student welfare, rehabilitation services and services for older people.
Report also suggests adopting a stronger orientation to medicine
According to the report, to achieve a strong position as a university with research and education in the social and health sector, JYU needs to create a stronger connection with medicine.
Without applying for new education responsibilities, the Ģֱ could profile its current educational offering, for example, towards translational medicine, which combines basic skills in the natural sciences and clinical medicine. At JYU, research and teaching in the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences and the Faculty of Mathematics and Science have the closest connections with medicine.
The University’s multidisciplinary competence base enables cooperation with medical faculties both in Finland and abroad. JYU could be profiled, for example, as a provider of education in family medicine, which could first offer continuing education, and then later apply for the opportunity to establish degree education in medicine.
“The structural reform of social and health care services offers an excellent starting point for utilising the multidisciplinary competence of the Ģֱ when reforming and extending the selection of university-level degrees in the social and health sector to better respond to the requirements of today’s society and population structure,” says the head of the working group, Jukka-Pekka Mecklin.
