Patients’ Messages as Educators in an Interprofessional Health Education Program

Abstract

Background: Patients have traditionally played a passive role in health professional education. Health Mentors Programs are new, innovative interprofessional education initiatives that involve "health mentors" (volunteer community patient educators), who share their experiences navigating the healthcare system with an interprofessional team of four health professional students. The purpose of this research was to explore what motivated the patient educators to participate in the Dalhousie Health Mentors Program and what messages they wanted to instill in health professional students.Methods: Data were collected through seven semi-structured focus groups (N = 29) and one individual interview (N = 1), which were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Qualitative inductive thematic analysis was used to identify key themes.Findings: Our study demonstrated that patients want to play an active role in educating health professional students with the hope of improving the healthcare system. The mentors wanted to convey to the students the importance of interprofessional collaboration, understanding patients are people first, listening to patients, and understanding the visible and invisible impacts of living with chronic conditions.Conclusions: If we expect our students to become competent in providing interprofessional, patient-centred care, it is important that we provide opportunities for patients to be actively involved in health professional education, as they have important messages that cannot be taught from a textbook.

Role of active patient involvement in undergraduate medical education: a systematic review

“…Several authors referred to government policy mandating patient participation in medical education, namely the UK Department of Health and the UK General Medical Council, 16 23 24 the Australian Medical Council 25 and the WHO 5 as a rationale for their patient involvement initiatives. Besides these political drivers, cited rationales were: to teach students patient-centred and interprofessional care 24 26–28 ; to introduce students to chronic illness care 29–31 ; to create a multicultural learning environment; to practise social accountability and an inclusion agenda 32–37 ; to make education more engaging, powerful and transformative 38 ; and to empower patients. 39 Patients mentioned that they felt a sense of responsibility to the broader community in shaping the future health workforce 24 32 and improving the healthcare system.…”

“… 39 Patients mentioned that they felt a sense of responsibility to the broader community in shaping the future health workforce 24 32 and improving the healthcare system. 24 33 40 …”

“…The duration of the preparation ranged from substantial training sessions of 100 hours in total 42 to the majority of programmes providing solely written information or a single orientation session of 1–1.5 hours. 24 30 32 39 43 49 52 57 Training programmes for patients in teaching musculoskeletal (MSK) skills were the most extensive and were delivered by medical or educational experts. 42 47 54 56 58 59 Other preparatory sessions were less formal and were facilitated by faculty educational experts, students or peers.…”

“…66 Patients' views of the impact of their involvement Patients described a strong sense of having a meaningful contribution and personal fulfilment, because they were teaching patient-centredness, 24 72 offering their body and authenticity, bolstering students' confidence, 72 fulfilling their responsibility to the broader community 24 32 and improving the healthcare system. 24 33 40 On an individual level patients described material, professional, personal and emotional benefits. Material benefits included receiving tangible rewards such as gifts 43 and receiving a full medical check-up.…”

Patients as educators: the challenges and benefits of sharing experiences with students

“…Dalhousie health mentors participated in the programme because they had messages to share about collaborative practice, putting the patient first, understanding the impact of living with a chronic condition, and the importance of listening to the patient 13 . The degree to which mentors felt their messages were registering with students was associated with overall negative or positive experiences.…”