Moronke Agboola is from Nigeria and works in healthcare administration. She is studying our MSc Healthcare Management course to improve her understanding of the sector with a view to improve patient care in the future.
‘I started off my career as a banker,’ explains Moronke. ‘My only experience back then of healthcare was as a patient who had used services when I got sick, but I’ve always been an advocate for great customer service.
‘So, after having my own children I started looking into the healthcare industry and landed a job working for Tristate Cardiovascular Associates as Business Administration Manager.’
While Moronke knew she had strong business administrative skills, Healthcare, she realised, was an incredibly unique sector and to excel in it, she’d need to plug the gaps in her knowledge with a university course.
She says: ‘The UK seemed the most natural choice, as the healthcare system is admired by the world. I wanted to learn some of those skills in an established institution like the NHS.
‘I found the MSc Healthcare Management course at Kent and read good reviews. It seemed like a great place for international students. I moved with my family and got my three children into local schools which they have easily settled into.’
Moronke agrees that the business side of the course has greatly improved her natural administration skills, but the healthcare side has supercharged her knowledge in the sector, making her ready to take on even bigger roles in healthcare.
‘It was a learning experience for me,’ says Moronke. ‘When I saw course titles like Collaborative Healthcare Practice, Managing Integrated Healthcare, and Managing Uncertainty in healthcare, my interest was piqued and when I started learning, I saw they completely made sense and are extremely important to any business.
Loving the presentational group work element of her course, Moronke has really thrived in the diverse cohort attached to this MSc, with classmates hailing from all over the globe.
‘I have friends from Barbados, India, China – so many different places. It is rewarding to learn from them. We are often placed in groups and asked to read research studies and present to the class, which helps us to understand and reflect critically on what we are learning.
‘What really came home to me during my study is that the patient should be at the centre of everything in a healthcare organisation. When that fails, everything around the system struggles.
‘For instance, in a care home I know, there is a proposed 35 minute cap on patient feeding time. What if the assigned staff doesn’t utilize the time efficiently to feed a vulnerable patient? The patient suffers.
This amongst others, is an area I am really interested in making a change, because policy implementation is vital in any healthcare organisation to prevent situations where vulnerable patients are at the mercy of distracted and non- diligent staff.
With hopes to stay in the UK for some more time after she graduates, Moronke is aiming to be a changemaker in the sector.
‘I’d like to get the experiential knowledge beyond the classroom,’ she says. ‘To apply everything I’ve learned within the NHS, at least for some time after I study.’
Designed in collaboration with the Centre for Health Services Studies (CHSS), our CMI-accredited MSc Healthcare Management course is taught by international experts and enables you to get to grips with corporate strategy and leadership alongside the study of healthcare. Also available with an optional Industrial Placement.