Passing the Baton: A Longitudinal View of a Professional Doctorate

At our university in the UK the Professional Doctorate in Human and Health Sciences has recently welcomed its third group of multi-professional practitioners; they exhibit the recognizable enthusiasm, excitement and slight apprehension observed in most students on the first day of ‘school’. What these particular students see throughout the application process, induction and course handbook reflect several years of focused perseverance based on the original course leader’s vision and resolution of challenges within the university’s network, and experience obtained after two years of implementing the programme. A subsequent course leader has been given the responsibility of building upon the existing foundations and sets out to develop the second phase.