ABSTRACT
There is no doubt that ongoing professional development is essential to a successful healthcare management career, whether one is an early careerist, mid-level manager, or executive. Higher education provides an excellent environment to instil this lifelong learning passion into a students’ practice, and provides an avenue to accomplish the objective. This chapter explores the journey of one academic program to develop a meaningful co-curricular activity that would increase the likelihood that students were career-ready. Students were compelled to explore opportunities where they could gain healthcare experiences in communication, leadership, professionalism, knowledge of the healthcare environment and business skill competencies. Each semester, students would document lessons learned on personal portfolios, and a cumulative portfolio report would be made available to students the subsequent semester. The competency examples provided in the report provided talking points, case studies, and were meshed with course learning outcomes, and appeared to move students toward a more profession-focused outlook. The chapter concludes with suggestions for using healthcare competency-focused portfolios for personal career transitioning and institutional applications.
