Health Professions Education: Complexity, Teaching, and Learning

Author(s):  
Stewart P. Mennin ◽  
Stewart P. Mennin
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 1203-1226
Author(s):  
Marcela Costa ◽  
Emilia Kangasjarvi ◽  
Andrea Charise

AbstractFor nearly four decades, researchers have explored the integration of arts and humanities content into health professions education (HPE). However, enduring controversies regarding the purpose, efficacy, and implementation of humanities initiatives suggest that the timing and context of trainees’ exposure to such content is a key, but seldom considered, factor. To better understand the affordances of introducing humanities-based health curriculum prior to the HPE admissions gateway, we conducted a qualitative instrumental case study with participants from Canada’s first Health Humanities baccalaureate program. Fully anonymized transcripts from semi-structured interviews (n = 11) and focus groups (n = 14) underwent an open-coding procedure for thematic narrative analysis to reveal three major temporal domains of described experience (i.e., prior to, during, and following their participation in a 12-week semester-long “Introduction to Health Humanities” course). Our findings demonstrate that perceptions of arts- and humanities content in health education are generated well in advance of HPE admission. Among other findings, we define a new concept—epistemological multicompetence—to describe participants’ emergent capability to toggle between (and advocate for the role of) multiple disciplines, arts and humanities particularly, in health-related teaching and learning at the pre-professional level. Improved coordination of baccalaureate and HPE curricula may therefore enhance the development of capabilities associated with arts and humanities, including: epistemological multicompetence, aesthetic sensibility, and other sought-after qualities in HPE candidates. In conclusion, attending to the pre-professional admissions gateway presents a new, capabilities-driven approach to enhancing both the implementation and critical understanding of arts and humanities’ purpose, role, and effects across the “life course” of health professions education.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javeed Sukhera ◽  
Syed Hasan Ahmed

BACKGROUND Teaching and learning about topics such as bias is challenging due to the emotional nature of bias-related discourse. However, emotions can be challenging to study in health professions education for numerous reasons. With the emergence of Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), sentiment analysis (SA) has potential to bridge the gap. OBJECTIVE To improve our understanding of the role of emotions in bias related discourse, we developed and conducted a SA of bias related discourse among health professionals. METHODS We conducted a 2-stage quasi experimental study. First, we developed a SA (algorithm) within an existing archive of interviews with health professionals about bias. SA refers to a mechanism of analysis that evaluates the sentiment of textual data by assigning scores to textual components and calculating and assigning a sentiment value to the text. Next, we applied our SA algorithm to an archive of social media discourse on Twitter that contained equity related hashtags to compare sentiment among health professionals and the general population. RESULTS When tested on the initial archive, our SA algorithm was highly accurate compared to human scoring of sentiment. An analysis of bias-related social media discourse demonstrated that health professionals were less neutral than the general population when discussing social issues on professionally associated accounts, suggesting that health professionals attach more sentiment to their posts on Twitter than seen in the general population. CONCLUSIONS The finding that health professionals are more likely to show and convey emotions regarding equity related issues on social media has implications for teaching and learning about sensitive topics related in health professions education. Such emotions must therefore be considered in the design, delivery, and evaluation of equity and bias related education. CLINICALTRIAL Not applicable


Author(s):  
Jenny Moffett ◽  
Jennifer Hammond ◽  
Paul Murphy ◽  
Teresa Pawlikowska

AbstractAlthough the evidence base around uncertainty and education has expanded in recent years, a lack of clarity around conceptual terms and a heterogeneity of study designs means that this landscape remains indistinct. This scoping review explores how undergraduate health professions' students learn to engage with uncertainty related to their academic practice. To our knowledge, this is the first scoping review which examines teaching and learning related to uncertainty across multiple health professions. The scoping review is underpinned by the five-stage framework of (Arksey and O'Malley in Scoping studies: Towards a methodological framework International Journal of Social Research Methodology 8(1) 19-32, 2005). We searched MEDLINE, Embase, PsychINFO, ISI Web of Science, and CINAHL and hand-searched selected health professions’ education journals. The search strategy yielded a total of 5,017 articles, of which 97 were included in the final review. Four major themes were identified: “Learners’ interactions with uncertainty”; “Factors that influence learner experiences”; “Educational outcomes”; and, “Teaching and learning approaches”. Our findings highlight that uncertainty is a ubiquitous concern in health professions’ education, with students experiencing different forms of uncertainty at many stages of their training. These experiences are influenced by both individual and system-related factors. Formal teaching strategies that directly support learning around uncertainty were infrequent, and included arts-based teaching, and clinical case presentations. Students also met with uncertainty indirectly through problem-based learning, clinical teaching, humanities teaching, simulation, team-based learning, small group learning, tactical games, online discussion of anatomy topics, and virtual patients. Reflection and reflective practice are also mentioned as strategies within the literature.


Author(s):  
Sven A. Normann ◽  
Diane E. Beck

Although the number of distance learning courses and programs has grown exponentially in higher education, adoption has been slower within health professions education (Hunter et al., 2003; Lahaie, 2007). Health professions education encompasses the preparation of graduates for the professions of dentistry, nursing, medicine, and pharmacy, and the allied health professions that include clinical psychology, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech-language pathology. In particular, distance learning has been infrequently used for degree programs that prepare graduates to enter a health profession (Council for Higher Education Accreditation, 2002). Although this has been attributed to curricular requirements such as clinical training and professional socialization, health professions educators have also expressed concerns about quality and the demands on their time (Hunter et al., 2003; Andrews and Demps, 2003; Lahaie, 2007). Health professions educators have more readily adopted distance teaching and learning methods in programs that provide working healthcare professionals with advanced degrees, training, and continuing education (Learn, 1994; Curran, 2006; Long, 2007; Billings, 2007). These methods have also been more willingly implemented within courses that are part of a campus-based curriculum leading to a professional degree (Hunter et al., 2003; Andrews & Demps, 2003; Ruiz, 2006).<br /><br />For more information regarding the Pharm.D. distance learning curriculum at the University of Florida, please visit: <a href='http://pharmd.distancelearning.ufl.edu' target='ufl'>http://pharmd.distancelearning.ufl.edu</a>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra E Carr ◽  
Farah Noya ◽  
Brid Phillips ◽  
Anna Harris ◽  
Karen Scott ◽  
...  

Abstract Background:The articulation of learning goals, processes and outcomes related to health humanities teaching currently lacks comparability of curricula and outcomes, and requires synthesis to provide a basis for developing a curriculum and evaluation framework for health humanities teaching and learning. This scoping review sought to answer, how, and why the health humanities are used in health professions education. It also sought to explore how health humanities curricula are evaluated and whether the programme evaluation aligns with the desired learning outcomes. Methods:A focused scoping review of qualitative and mixed-methods studies that included the influence of integrated health humanities curricula in pre-registration health professions education with programme evaluate of outcomes was completed. Studies of students not enrolled in a pre-registration course, with only ad-hoc health humanities learning experiences that were not assessed or evaluated were excluded. Four databases were searched (CINAHL), (ERIC), PubMed, and Medline.Results:The search over a 5 year period, identified 8,621 publications. Title and abstract screening, followed by full-text screening, resulted in 24 articles selected for inclusion. Learning outcomes, learning activities and evaluation data were extracted from each included publication. Discussion:Reported health humanities curricula focused on developing students’ capacity for perspective, reflexivity, self- reflection and person-centred approaches to communication. However the learning outcomes were not consistently described, identifying a limited capacity to compare health humanities curricula across programmes. A set of clearly stated generic capabilities or outcomes from learning in health humanities would be a helpful next step for benchmarking, clarification and comparison of evaluation strategy.


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