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There is a push for universities to equip graduates with desirable employability skills and "hands-on" experience. This article explores the perceptions of students and staff experiences of a research assistantship scheme. Nine students from the University of Worcester were given the opportunity to work as a student vacation researcher for up to 10 weeks. This opportunity gave "hands-on" experience to students to understand real world research, thereby enabling the development of academic and research skills and increasing a student's employability. The scheme received positive feedback from both students and academic staff and was recommended as a means to enhance student's future employment.

Psychology is taught on a range of vocational courses including such training for professions as nurses, medics, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and other health care professionals. However, what is uncertain is what psychology is taught, who it is taught by and how it is taught. This project aims to address these unresolved questions by surveying course leaders' perspectives on the teaching of psychology within health professional courses. A total of 103 responses to a specially designed questionnaire were received from 300 courses across the United Kingdom. The results of the survey revealed a number of interesting findings. For example, the development, teaching and examination of psychology on health care professional courses is not always undertaken by qualified psychologists. The most commonly taught areas of psychology included health, social and developmental psychology and business and educational psychology the least. Psychology is a small component (less than 5 per cent) of the majority of health professional courses and this low level is considered appropriate. This being said, course leaders consider psychology important for a health professional's future career. On the basis of these results it is suggested that psychologists needs to develop and promote the psychology provision within health professional courses and develop strategies on how best psychology can be taught and assessed within an integrated health professional course. (Contains 9 tables and 1 figure.)

The education of nurses, midwives and allied health care professionals in the UK is guided by professional bodies and the over arching Health Professionals Council (HPC)/Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). Each of these professional bodies provides regulatory frameworks and guidance notes on the educational content of the degree level programmes that underpin the included profession. The professional and regulatory bodies oversee the educational requirements of the individual professions and suggest the key topics and curriculum content that have to be both studied and completed in order for the individual student to be considered a proficient practitioner in that area. These regulatory frameworks and the guidance from the professional bodies all mention the need for psychology to be contained within the educational experience. However, as a general rule there is, unsurprisingly, a greater focus on other topics within the curriculum for health care professionals. Why is this? Why isn't psychology a core subject? Why shouldn't psychology be a central focus within the health care curriculum? In this paper, the author explores these issues, with a focus on the place of psychology within the health care professionals' curriculum. Specifically, the author examines (1) the nature of curriculum content of the health care professionals; (2) why curriculum content is important; (3) studies of curriculum content; and (4) how the curriculum content should be chosen. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the evidence base of the Food Dudes healthy eating programme, specifically the short- and long-term effectiveness of the intervention for consumption of fruit and vegetables both at school and at home and displacement of unhealthy snack consumption. Design/Methodology/Approach: Articles were identified using Academic Search Complete, PsycARTICLES, Medline and PubMed databases keywords for the period January 1995 to August 2013. Articles were included if they reported an empirical evaluation of the Food Dudes programme aimed at children aged between 4-11 years. Articles were included regardless of geographical location and publication type (i.e. published and "grey" literature). Findings: Six articles were included for review. Findings indicated that the programme was moderately effective in the short term; however, the long-term effectiveness of the programme is unknown. The ability of the programme to generalise to the home setting and to displace unhealthy snack foods also requires further investigation. Originality/Value: This is the first independent review of the Food Dudes programme. In light of the extensive roll out of the Food Dudes programme, an appraisal of the evidence surrounding the programme is timely. The review highlights that sustaining fruit and vegetable intake cannot be achieved through behaviour-based interventions alone and the long-term maintenance of fruit and vegetable consumption requires more than the implementation of an intervention found to be effective in a controlled research environment.

The article discusses the health challenges faced by the Northern Territory (NT) in Australia, including high levels of morbidity and mortality, particularly among Indigenous Australians. It highlights the shortage of health care professionals in the NT, leading to inadequate health care services and poor health outcomes. The authors recommend recruiting and retaining a context-specific health workforce, including more Indigenous health practitioners, to address the region's unique health needs and improve health outcomes for the population. [Extracted from the article]

On-line teaching material in health psychology was developed which ensured a range of students could access appropriate material for their course and level of study. This material has been developed around the concept of smaller "content chunks" which can be combined into whole units of learning (topics), and ultimately, a module. On the basis of the underlying philosophy that the medium is part of the message, we considered interactivity to be a key element in engaging the student with the material. Consequently, the key aim of this development was to stimulate and engage students, promoting better involvement with the academic material, and hence better learning. It was hoped that this was achieved through the development of material including linked programmes and supporting material, small Java Scripts and basic email, forms and HTML additions. This material is outlined as some of the interactive activities introduced, and the preliminary student and tutor experience described. (Contains 3 tables.)