Higher education and teacher education in particular are entering a time of transformation.  With major forces like shifting demographics, new technologies, and the move from an industrial to an information society, teacher educators need not only to prepare teachers for new ways of teaching, but also must adopt and model best practices for these new teaching methods.  This study examines how several key strategies from Flipped Classroom theory can be adapted to an instructional methods course.  Findings show that with careful curriculum design, both content and methods learning objectives can be taught and mastered with Flipped Classroom methods.

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Background The entire school community contributes to the safety of students with food allergy. We sought to determine the food allergy perceptions and education needs of parents, students and school staff, with the goal of enhancing food allergy education in schools. Methods With ethics approval from the University of Manitoba and participating school divisions, elementary school principals emailed SurveyMonkey® Questionnaire Links to their parent/caregiver contact list and school staff. We compared anonymous responses of parents of children with and without food allergy, students with and without food allergy, and parents and school staff using chi-squared tests. Results Participants included 561 parents of school-age children (ages 7–12 years, 19% with food allergy), 61 students (23% with food allergy), and 203 school staff (62% teachers, 88% with experience managing food allergies in the classroom). Parents of children with and without food allergy considered food allergy when sending food to school (98% vs. 96%, p = 0.39). More parents of children with food allergy thought that greater information and awareness about food allergy was needed (74% vs. 44%, p < 0.0001). Students with food allergy were most interested (100%) in having other students learn not to bully and how to help during a reaction. Students without food allergy were most interested in learning how to prevent a reaction (70%). Fewer parents than school staff thought that food allergies in the classroom impacted teachers’ time (2.1% vs. 21%, p < 0.0001) and that teachers knew how to treat allergic reactions to foods (34% vs. 94%, p < 0.0001). More parents than school staff thought that banning foods from classrooms kept allergic students safe (65% vs. 34%, p = 0.006) and that having a Food Allergy Educator speak at school would be helpful (99% vs. 67%, p < 0.0001). Conclusions Food allergy education is necessary for the entire school community and should include parents of school-aged children with and without food allergy, students with and without food allergy, and teachers and school staff. These members of the school community recognized their own and others’ needs for increased food allergy education and awareness in the school setting.

Abstract:In 2012-2013, CMH (Community Memorial Hospital) had a 10.5% 30-day readmission rate from SNFs (skilled nursing facilities). The focus of the Connections of Care Coalition was to review the medication reconciliation process and to involve pharmacists in the transition of patients to SNFs. The objective of the project was to work as an interdisciplinary team to improve the communication during transitions of care from our hospital to local SNFs by identifying key issues and initiating pharmacy practice change. This quality improvement project had a pre-post study design. Patients older than 18 years of age discharged to SNFs and/or readmitted from SNFs within 30 days were included. Baseline data was collected, specific pharmacist interventions were identified, educated on and implemented, and post-implementation data was collected. The number of interventions made and documented by pharmacists for patients being discharged from CMH to local SNFs did not significantly change during this quality improvement study. Clinically significant interventions were made on high risk medications, such as warfarin. Finally, a newly redesigned SNF workflow was implemented to include pharmacy, nursing, social work/case management to improve patient care and safety for discharges to SNFs.