I was approached by the University College of Osteopathy (UCO) to support a HEIF-funded Knowledge Exchange initiative which included the development of entrepreneurial skills over the Summer of 2022.

The UCO provides a wealth of clinical skills development for both their students, and through CPD offerings, to working osteopathic practitioners. However, despite many of their students setting up their own clinical practices upon graduation there was little formal educational provision beyond required professional standards.

Whilst osteopaths and osteopathic students did not readily identify as ‘entrepreneurs’ or even necessarily as business-owners we quickly established a body of work we described as ‘practice management’ that would be both approachable in tone and readily applicable in practice which would add value for students and staff alike.

In liaison with UCO academic staff I developed four different session plans for different audiences:

• Student-facing design and delivery:
  • How to run a successful practice
  • User Experience Design for Osteopaths
• Staff-facing design and delivery:
  • 2 Tips and 6 tools for teaching entrepreneurship to Osteopaths
• CPD network-facing design and delivery:
  • CPD Roundtable on Entrepreneurship

These sessions were each intended to be interactive, participatory classes drawing on the participants own existing experience of both osteopathic practice specifically and user experiences of products and services more generally to illuminate the entrepreneurship and design content in a relevant and practically applicable manner. Methods and resources to support the sessions were deliberately selected from authentic, readily available, and wherever possible free sources to enable flexible continued use of the materials.

The ‘Entrepreneurship’ content was focused on how students might ‘diagnose’ that a practice was being well-run; then working through those insights to establish a way of thinking both critically about practice management, and creatively about the required skills and knowhow to manage a practice well. We also touched on:

• Creating a compelling Value Proposition for a practice
• Business Models (and Personal Business Models)
• Identifying target audiences and markets
• Marketing: Get-Keep-Grow
• Aligning founder ambition and values with the practice itself

The ‘Design’ content was focused on how students might empathise with their prospective users and customers to develop a better user experience of consulting an osteopath and increasing the value of their offering. This content included:

• Design Thinking
• User Empathy and Journey Mapping
• Idea generation
• Testing and Validating ideas

The staff-facing session included a short digest of those tools shared with the students alongside a thorough discussion of the why, how, and what of teaching entrepreneurship outside of a business school environment to students who did not necessarily identify as entrepreneurs.

The CPD session was a roundtable discussion of similar themes but amongst practicing osteopaths to scope out future programme development.

Response to the work

Delivery went well with students and staff offering very positive remarks in each at the time of presenting.

Staff feedback:

“I just wanted to say thank you to Dave for the excellent sessions. The sessions were very well received by both staff and students and were exactly the type of training and tools that osteopaths have traditionally lacked. The sessions also created confidence in this area and I believe will give our graduates a head start in developing their practices.” 

Patrick Gauthier, Deputy Course Leader.

“Really helpful, just the right amount of information for the limited time we had but deftly allowing for some important discussion as well. Hoping the sparks from this session will ignite some change in the way we incorporate these ideas into our curriculum; I for one will be right behind it!”

Soran David, Unit Leader and Clinic Tutor.

Student feedback:

“I enjoyed the session with Dave Jarman today. He clearly is an expert in his field and excellent at looking at many different types of businesses proposals with the various tools he has to hand and I can see how you could use any of those tools as a way for students to start to think about their business and indeed anyone else to look at their business.”

“It made the prospect of being your own business exciting rather than daunting. Having grown up in a family of entrepreneurs, worked in start-ups and been self-employed for a while, it highlighted many things I was familiar with at this stage in life, but many students are not necessarily surrounded by people who can help with this stuff, and particularly in the full-time course, I imagine having less work life experience could make stepping out on your own quite scary without any previous benchmarks.”

“I thought today was fabulous, thank you so much for organising, I’d love to attend the follow up please!”

If this example of work is something you’d be interested in me doing for you or your organisation please contact me.