EBME Forums Forums Management Training foundation degree in medical engineering

A Foundation degree is a vocational higher education qualification combining academic study with work based learning and experience. Sector skills council are activly involved. Foundation degrees are classified at level 5 (honours degree is level 6) Completion allows you progress if you so wish onto a relevent honours degree program.

Capital will be running a foundation degree in medical equipment technology (pending validation), mapped to the new occupational standard in medical engineering. This is a distance learning course in partnership with a London University (Kingston), the course duration is 2 years.

Burseries are available. The foundation degree will then allow you to continue study for a further 12 months if you so wish in order to gain your honours degree. 4 weekends per annum will be spent at Capital medical training school for assesment as well as assesment in the work place.

If you are interested in such a program then please contact my good self Rob Strange at capital medical or tel 01299 250830.

The foundation degree program is available upon request.

Will it be possible to have a go from overseas, then, Rob? With the attendance element taken during a visit, all in one go, as it were. Cheers from my bad self, Geoff.

Hi Geoff,

The beauty about foundation degrees is that they are completed within the work place, with external assessors visiting to test competency and knowledge. It is easier and far more cost effective to bring the students into one locality and test collectively as opposed to sending out numerous assessors. But for students overseas it would be relatively simple to arrange for assessment at their locality. Like everything it comes down to a matter of cost.

I am trying to keep the student fees down to the bare minimum.

But again I stress this course is for people currently working within the medical engineering field. Ideal for EBME staff without formal qualifications.

The new occupational standard for medical engineering was in the main put together by Capital medical and SEMTA completed and past by QCA in Feb 06, It is important that any qualifications map to the occupational standard, this Degree course does just that.

Is the new occupational standard mentioned the same as those for the HealthCare Science National Occupational Standards, now under the auspices of Skills for Health? If not, how does it fit in?

The medical engineering occupational standard has been approved by QCA and Skills For Health. It is my understanding that those for healthcare science have yet to be approved, allthough I beleive they will be part of of the same arena.

I do have a pdf copy, I will try and post this onto the capital website, failing that I will have a chat with John Sandham or Huw to place it onto EBME. But it does effect all within this field of medical engineering as it deals directly with competency. If your training course does not map to the national occupational standard why are you doing it?

Thanks for the clarification. I was a bit concerned that if the standards did not concur with SfH, who are the Sector Skills Council for health, then it may not have been appropriate to go for this course, given the link between SfH competencies and KSF.

Rob,
At what qualification level will this begin.
You say 2 yrs.
what would be the difference between someone with HNC and 20 odd yrs experience and someone with ONC and 2yrs experience.

I believe that a Foundation degree is the equivalent of the old diploma i.e. second year of a 3 year degree, roughly equivalent to an HND (HNC ~ year 1 certificate). The main difference is that Fd's are work based rather than academically based. The theory is that you can go on to add further modules at level 3 in order to complete a full degree.

As for the difference, traditionally it may be possible to count the HNC toward a higher level (degree) qualification, but not the ONC. Similarly 20 years experience should count for something under APEL, but it is unlikely that 2 years would.

Gents, foundation degrees were set up by David Blunkett in order to address skill shortage in the work place, they are completly different than HND/HNC/ONC which were primarily academic based qualifications. A goverment body has been set up to assist the development of foundation degrees namely foundation degree forward, www.fdf.ac.uk

It is also not strictly true that ONC can not be used under APEL (accreditation of prior experiential leaning). It depends on the individual programme concerned.


please log onto FDF it really will answer your questions. But please remember that our degree is mapped to the occupational standard that has been approved by QCA.

hi

rob what are the occupational standards? can i get hold of this list, if it is widely available?

thanks