Introduction: a professional journey

Why do we focus on nursing and construction management degrees in this publication? This is a reasonable question, considering the two professions are unrelated except that their practitioners are expected to be university graduates. Nonetheless, there are similarities between these disciplines. For instance, both nursing and construction management in Australia are subject to the rigorous accreditation requirements of their professional bodies which require a prescriptive profile of student attributes. These accreditation structures differ in that nursing has a single board whereas construction has a large number of national and international bodies to respond to, each body with different accreditation requirements and processes. Another significant parallel is the requirement for students to undertake a prescriptive work placement experience as a core component of their degree which is called ’clinical placement’ in nursing, and ‘industrial placement’ in construction. Another similarity is that they enrol large cohorts and require suitable placement opportunities to be available for all students. For these placement activities to be managed, monitored and assessed imposes significant pressure on universities to organise the programs as well as for industry/hospital systems to facilitate opportunities. An important consideration is that these large scale placement experiences have the potential to impact on the overall outlook of graduates.