More survey results...oh, and Happy Friday!

A couple of weeks ago I posted results from the Health Sector Council’s grade 12 exit strategy survey showing that parents are the strongest influence on students’ education and career plans. I’d like to point out a few other results from the survey in this post.

One of the things we found was that many students were interested in the health sector as a career option (33% of students indicated interest). When asked about specific occupational groups within the health sector that they were interested in pursuing, the majority indicated nurse (22.3%), doctor (18.2%) and pharmacist (9.5%). Either students are not interested in other health careers, or (more likely) are not aware of the variety of health careers available.

Later in the survey students were provided a list of 62 health occupations that are practiced on PEI – jobs like medical lab technologist, addictions counsellor, emergency medical technician, resident care worker, nuclear medicine technologist, and so on – and were asked to indicate which careers looked interesting. Each entry included a small amount of information on the occupation, including salary range and education requirements, so that students could make an informed decision. Not surprisingly, many students were interested in other health careers, in addition to nurse, physician and pharmacist. Interest was strong in higher salaried positions like medical physicist, dentist, family doctor, specialist physician and psychiatrist, but was also strong in occupations with much lower remuneration – jobs like addictions counsellor and child development worker – suggesting salary wasn’t the sole factor influencing students’ expression of interest. In fact, the most popular jobs were those that included a high degree of social interaction and whose practitioners might be viewed as helping clients ‘better’ themselves (addictions counsellor, child development worker, psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, dietitian and physiotherapist, for example).

Overall interest in health careers increased dramatically (from 33% to 53.6%) after the students reviewed the 62 occupations, suggesting that the more health career information students have at their disposal, the more likely they are to find a job that matches their interest. Not rocket science, obviously, but the simple fact is that many students don’t have access to this information. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we have a directory of PEI health careers available for download. Let me know if you want a hard copy.

Cheers,
Mark