Our philosophy

It is our strongly held view that "career guidance" is more to do with "learning" by the individual and "empowerment" of the individual than it is to do with the more traditional view of "you go to get career guidance from someone" (the latter implying that it is a paternalistic process or that you can not do it for yourself).

We believe that with the right information (about self, desires, the options and about career management techniques/skills) the majority of people can guide and plan their own careers with the minimum of input from a professional career guidance source.

Thus Medical Forum is first and foremost a "learning" organisation. The emphasis is not therefore on instant access to careers advice (not least because career development is something that takes months or years to implement and can rarely be resolved in minutes or hours). Our focus is more a process by which career exploration, evaluation and planning is facilitated.

The amount of support, information and learning each person needs to progress at an ideal speed for them in their careers is different. Some people join us without any idea whatsoever what they want and others join us because they know very clearly what they want but can't seem to make it happen and still others join because things seem to be going badly wrong . Some even join because things are going so well the number of options has overwhelmed them!

Career development with Medical Forum is like a train journey.

Some people get on right at the beginning of the journey and stay on right until the end. Others get on at one stop and then get off at the next. Some travel with us nearly every day and others only occasionally or if their car is in for servicing. Sadly a few miss the train altogether or are ill at ease travelling by train. There are at times barriers to progress that may be out of both your and our control like lost tickets, leaves on the line and the wrong type of snow! However,  we have good "career" trains and a well maintained "career" track with lots of "career" tools to put things in order!

Thus although it is fine to just nip in and do say our "interview wizardry" course on the Skills Bank if an important job is coming up - the real value of your contact with us will be through careful study of our web site over visits spanning a period of weeks, months or even years and using the many available training options here - so that you can

• learn about our philosophy and approach
• learn about our facilities and how best to use them for your career
• learn about yourself and what makes you tick
• learn about how to define what you want
• learn about what you would be good at
• learn about what areas you need to work on
• learn about the options out there and how to explore them
• learn about how to generate new options
• learn about how to plan your career