MPH5274 · Public health placement

Overview

Employability skills will help you manage and develop your career, and workplace based placements are an important way to enhance your employability. As well as allowing you to apply knowledge and skills in a professional environment, placements also provide insight into organisational communication and culture, professional socialisation, and attitudes and behaviours expected within the workplace setting. This unit is designed as one of the capstone experiences offered within the Master of Public Health (M6024). The unit aims to provide you with the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills you have developed in the Master of Public Health in a workplace setting such as a public health related government, non-government or community-based organisation or institution. The Public health placement is undertaken onsite in a placement within an organisation. The placement within the organisation and the type of work or project undertaken will be orientated towards developing your experience and career interests, as well as being relevant to the operational or development needs of the organisation. Depending on the organisation and placement, you could be involved in public health practice in health protection (communicable disease prevention and control or environmental health investigation), chronic disease prevention, health promotion, health policy, planning or management, or in aspects of public health research and evaluation projects such as in protocol development and establishment of projects, without necessarily undertaking the research project. Additional training that could improve work readiness such as CV preparation or presentation skills would be identified and undertaken within scope of the unit. This would be reflected in the agreed supervisor/student project plan to guide the placement, the outcomes of the placement, and their assessment. The Public health placement will also help develop your profile and networks in the field of public health.

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

Assessment in this unit includes hurdle assessment tasks. Failure of any hurdle assessment task may result in failure of the unit

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

The Handbook lists no prerequisite, corequisite or prohibition for this unit.

Learning outcomes

1. Integrate and apply public health knowledge and skills to address a public health issue or problem.
2. Apply academic and research integrity and governance principles in a workplace setting.
3. Critically evaluate background literature or information relevant to the public health issue or problem.
4. Develop and document a project plan including key milestones, deliverables and timelines.
5. Analyse and propose practical solutions to problems within the scope of the work based practicum.
6. Apply skills of project management including professional communication, stakeholder identification, teamwork, and leadership in a working environment.
7. Apply public health skills to generate workplace-appropriate written report/s and written or oral presentation/s
8. Apply skills learned in public health to create a job application in the form of a CV and responses to key selection criteria or to develop an online professional profile for the public health field.

Workload

The Public health placement is undertaken onsite within an organisation. A 12 credit point placement would involve approximately 20 hours of work-place directed activities plus 4 hours of self-directed study activities per week over a 12 week semester.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.