CareerFlix: An Interprofessional Video Series to Engage Prospective Students
Background:
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic created many difficulties for both university and organization involvement. Despite this, the pandemic also challenged leaders of these groups to organize and create new and innovative ways to engage current and prospective students, and technology has been shown to play a key role in these efforts.
Design:
The Alpha Eta Chapter at West Virginia University (WVU) of Phi Lambda Sigma was awarded the Chapter Development Award Grant for development of a video series entitled “CareerFlix" wherein current students provide discipline specific information to educate middle school, high school, and collegiate students on potential career options within healthcare. The videos focus on the health professional program and not on the university.
Results:
Of the fifteen professional healthcare fields of study offered at WVU, eight programs accepted an invitation to participate. The students from the participating disciplines, which includes Athletic Training, Biomedical Laboratory Diagnostics, Pharmacy, Physical Therapy, Public Health, Dentistry, and Nursing, were given approximately two months to organize a team and create a short five-minute video highlighting their profession. In all, approximately 35 students participated in the ideation of these videos, including one journalism student who helped in the final video editing process.
Conclusions:
This collaborative effort allowed student leaders from various health professional programs to utilize a creative, modern approach to educate others about their discipline and ideally to recruit prospective students. This interprofessional approach allowed students to learn from, about, and with each other while highlighting their role on the healthcare team.
Lessons learned:
Barriers for participation included student schedules and workload, as the initial meetings and video design were completed toward the end of the semester and start of experiential rotations. Plans are to include the remaining health professional programs in the fall to have a comprehensive collection of “CareerFlix” videos.
