Evaluation of Constructing Care Collaboration - nurturing empathy and peer-to-peer learning in medical students who participate in voluntary structured service learning programmes for migrant workers

Derksen

et al. 2020

Preprint

Background: Community service provides avenues for social learning in medical education. Partnerships between medical schools and local healthcare agencies has paved the path for an active participation of a medical student in the community. This seems to have a positive impact on the medical knowledge and skills of students and also leads to a betterment of healthcare services for the community. National accreditation agencies and medical boards have emphasized that medical schools should provide opportunities for such learning to occur in the medical school curriculum. Various medical schools around the globe have adopted this active learning pedagogy and thus we wanted to explore how we can establish such a learning framework at out university.Methods: This was a qualitative study based on feedback from volunteer students who attended the annual health fare conducted in collaboration with local healthcare agencies. Two focus group interviews were recorded, transcribed and coded for thematic analyses.Results: Overall, the students enjoyed learning various clinical procedural skills. This activity was an opportunity to apply the medical knowledge learnt in classrooms. The students developed various competencies like communication skills, professionalism, team work and social responsibility. Prevalent health conditions discovered by the students included diabetes mellitus, hypertension and nutritional imbalance.Conclusions: This study explores how serving the community can bring about an educational change for a medical student. The community service framework promotes social learning, interprofessional education, peer learning and active learning amongst medical students.

Section: Overall Bene Tssupporting

confidence: 58%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Building Community and Medical School Partnerships: Impact on Undergraduate Medical Education and Research

Derksen

et al. 2020

Preprint

“…The formal curriculum will also facilitate holistic and longitudinal assessments with clear opportunities for targeted and timely intervention and remediation before the physician lags too far behind. In addition, being integrated into the formal medical curricula allows for ‘protected time’ allocated [ 5 , 41 , 97 , 148 , 151 ] for training both learners and faculty members overseeing and conducting the curricula [ 7 , 42 , 44 , 55 , 70 , 72 , 79 , 81 , 83 , 85 , 97 , 100 , 101 , 105 , 125 , 128 , 133 , 143 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A systematic scoping review of approaches to teaching and assessing empathy in medicine

Zhou

Tan

et al. 2021

BMC Med Educ

Background Empathy is pivotal to effective clinical care. Yet, the art of nurturing and assessing empathy in medical schools is rarely consistent and poorly studied. To inform future design of programs aimed at nurturing empathy in medical students and doctors, a review is proposed. Methods This systematic scoping review (SSR) employs a novel approach called the Systematic Evidence Based Approach (SEBA) to enhance the reproducibility and transparency of the process. This 6-stage SSR in SEBA involved three teams of independent researchers who reviewed eight bibliographic and grey literature databases and performed concurrent thematic and content analysis to evaluate the data. Results In total, 24429 abstracts were identified, 1188 reviewed, and 136 included for analysis. Thematic and content analysis revealed five similar themes/categories. These comprised the 1) definition of empathy, 2) approaches to nurturing empathy, 3) methods to assessing empathy, 4) outcome measures, and 5) enablers/barriers to a successful curriculum. Conclusions Nurturing empathy in medicine occurs in stages, thus underlining the need for it to be integrated into a formal program built around a spiralled curriculum. We forward a framework built upon these stages and focus attention on effective assessments at each stage of the program. Tellingly, there is also a clear need to consider the link between nurturing empathy and one’s professional identity formation. This foregrounds the need for more effective tools to assess empathy and to better understand their role in longitudinal and portfolio based learning programs.

Maternal & Child Nutrition

“…The theory of planned behaviour suggests that for HWs to successfully change their practices, they need to have a positive attitude to the proposed change, believe that they will be able to implement the change, and that their peers and other stakeholders will support them. Peer‐to‐peer learning with senior clinic managers and lower HW cadres attending the same workshops ensures that team members learn together and develop a common vision and has been successfully used among teams of medical students (Sin et al, ) and primary care practitioners (Coleman et al, ). Where team members have different roles and scope of practice, implementation can be coordinated between different members of the team.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An educational intervention to update health workers about HIV and infant feeding

Horwood

Haskins

Goga

et al. 2019

Clinical guidelines are used to translate research findings into evidence‐based clinical practice but are frequently not comprehensively adopted by health workers (HWs). HIV and infant feeding guidelines were revised by the World Health Organization to align feeding advice for HIV‐exposed and unexposed infants, and these were adopted in South Africa in 2017. We describe an innovative, team‐based, mentoring programme developed to update HWs on these guidelines. The intervention was underpinned by strong theoretical frameworks and aimed to improve HWs' attitudes, knowledge, confidence, and skills about breastfeeding in the context of HIV. On‐site workshops and clinical mentoring used interactive participatory methods and a simple low‐tech approach, guided by participants' self‐reported knowledge gaps. Workshops were conducted at 24 participating clinics over three sessions, each lasting 1–2 hr. Evaluation data were collected using a self‐administered questionnaire. Of 303 participating HWs, 249/303 (82.2%) attended all workshops. Achieving high workshop attendance was challenging and “catch‐up” sessions were required to achieve good coverage. Common knowledge gaps identified included antiretroviral therapy adherence monitoring during breastfeeding and management of viral load results (173 participants), management of breast conditions (79), and advice about expressing and storing breastmilk (64). Most participants reported all their knowledge gaps were addressed and anticipated that their practice would change. We describe a feasible, sustainable approach to updating HWs on HIV and infant feeding guidelines and improving skills in breastfeeding counselling in resource‐constrained settings. This approach could be adapted to other topics and, with further evaluation, implemented at scale using existing resources.