PRESTIGE OF BACHELOR’S TRAINING IN VARIOUS SPECIALTIES OF MIHE «RIVNE MEDICAL ACADEMY»

Introduction. The prestige of professions is currently of great scientific and practical interest. Obviously, at any time and under any socio-political regime, professional orientation takes into account such a factor as the profession's prestige. In the studies carried out in various fields, the general characteristics of the prestige of professions and the factors affecting it were considered. At the same time, the prestige of specific professions and specialties was studied to a limited extent. This also applies to interesting and important specialties such as 224 «Technology of Medical Diagnostics and Treatment» and 227 «Physical Therapy and Ergotherapy.» Unfortunately, there are practically no empirical studies of the prestige of the profession of a medical laboratory assistant and a physical therapist assistant. This state of affairs negatively affects the quality of professional training in these specialties. Purpose. To assess the prestige of specialties 224 «Technology of Medical Diagnostics and Treatment» and 227 «Physical Therapy and Ergotherapy» from the point of view of applicants and graduates of the Rivne Medical Academy. Results. The analysis of literary sources gave us the impetus to conduct empirical research. Respondents were students (junior and senior years) and graduates of specialties 224 «Technology of Medical Diagnostics and Treatment» and 227 «Physical Therapy and Ergotherapy».Among the graduates, it was important for us to know whether they were employed in their specialty. The answers were clear. All work in a specialty, which characterizes them as successful and in demand, which indirectly speaks about the prestige of the specialty. Satisfaction with professional activity was expressed by 84 % of graduates of specialty 224 «Technology of Medical Diagnostics and Treatment» and 94 % of specialty 227 «Physical Therapy and Ergotherapy». Respondents who graduated from both majors had no doubts about the prestige of their profession. More than 87 % believe that the profession is prestigious. Originality. Since graduates and senior students are more knowledgeable and oriented in their professional activities, this is natural. We need to raise the awareness of junior students. It would be logical to increase the effectiveness of the educational discipline «Introduction to the specialty» by including it in the category of the main components of both educational and professional programs of specialties. Conclusion. Our research allowed us to identify several factors that contribute to increasing the prestige of specialties: – increasing the volume of publicly available information about their direction, problems, tasks, achievements, and scientific and practical significance; about domestic and foreign colleagues who achieved outstanding scientific and practical results; – improvement of professional training in universities, increasing the practical focus of such training, increasing the arsenal of methodological tools for solving actual practical tasks; – development of typical career projects that orient and guide their personal and professional development, drawing up individual acmeograms; – work on creating a positive image of specialties.