Leslie Flynn

Faculty's and residents' perceptions of teaching and evaluating the role of health advocate: a study at one Canadian university.

Purpose To examine the views of faculty and residents about teaching and evaluating health advocacy, one of the more difficult CanMEDS roles to integrate into postgraduate medical education. Method In 2002, two focus groups of faculty and two of residents at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, were asked standardized questions to elicit their answers to what was a health care advocate as understood and reported by teachers and residents, and what were the reported barriers and enhancers to teaching and evaluating the role of residents as health care advocates. Results The study found that faculty and residents knew little about how to teach and evaluate the role of the health advocate. There was consensus between the two types of groups with congruity between residents and faculty about the key issues. The one exception to this was the disconnect between the faculty members’ belief that advocacy was an aspect of their daily work and the residents’ apparent lack of awareness of this. The majority of participants were not familiar with the Royal Colleges description of the role of health advocate and were very keen to receive further guidance on teaching tools and methods of evaluation. Conclusion The authors’ hypothesis was that little is known about how to teach and evaluate the role of the health advocate. The results confirmed this and identified important areas upon which to build an educational framework. The definition of the health advocate and the expectations require clarity and direction. Academic programs would benefit from clear objectives.

Fundamental components of a curriculum for residents in health advocacy.

Purpose: To develop components of a curriculum for teaching and evaluating Residents as health advocates. Method: Modeled on the Delphi technique, the first step involved a multidisciplinary panel of 10 Queens University health care providers with expertize in education and patient advocacy. In the context of four Advocacy questions: What is it?, Who does it?, How to teach it?, and How to evaluate it?, they discussed a curriculum framework including graded education, scholarly activity, role modeling, and case examples. In the second step, 24 faculty experts addressed two goals: (1) to identify attributes discussed by the expert panel in step 1 and corresponding measurable behaviours and (2) to refine the curriculum framework proposed in step 1 with emphasis on content and evaluation. Results: Six attributes of a health advocate were identified; knowledgeable, altruistic, honest, assertive, resourceful, and up-to date. Behaviours that reflect these attributes were identified as desirable or undesirable and means of teaching were matched to the attributes. For most residents, skills would be developed in a graded fashion, progressing from advocating for the individual to society as a whole. Conclusions: This study provides a general framework from which specialty-specific curriculums for training health advocates can be developed.

Learning theory and its application to the use of social media in medical education.

Background There is rapidly increasing pressure to employ social media in medical education, but a review of the literature demonstrates that its value and role are uncertain. Objective To determine if medical educators have a conceptual framework that informs their use of social media and whether this framework can be mapped to learning theory. Methods Thirty-six participants engaged in an iterative, consensus building process that identified their conceptual framework and determined if it aligned with one or more learning theories. Results The results show that the use of social media by the participants could be traced to two dominant theories—Connectivism and Constructivism. They also suggest that many medical educators may not be fully informed of these theories. Conclusions Medical educators’ use of social media can be traced to learning theories, but these theories may not be explicitly utilised in instructional design. It is recommended that formal education (faculty development) around learning theory would further enhance the use of social media in medical education.

Wellness Programmes: Primary-Care Medicine

The evidence suggests that there are benefits associated with wellness programmes but there are methodological limitations with the current state of studies which prohibit strong conclusions in favour of wellness programmes. Concepts of ‘holistic health’ and ‘traditional’ or ‘alternative health’ care have emerged in the past decade as challenges to conventional medical therapies. Wellness programmes may emerge as adjunctive or complementary modalities in primary care, both for the management of chronic illnesses and for the prevention of debilitating diseases. Although the scientific evidence in the form of randomised controlled trials is not conclusive, there is no doubt that a wide spectrum of ‘wellness’ activities are popular and attracting increased public interest. Further knowledge and understanding of wellness programmes, either as a whole or in their multitude of interventions, is important for primary-care physicians as these programmes may address many psychosocial and spiritual issues in patient care.

Supportive Psychotherapy: Perspectives on a Model of Supervision

Supportive psychotherapy can be defined as a dyadic treatment that uses direct measures to ameliorate symptoms and to maintain, restore, or improve self-esteem, ego function, and adaptive skills [1]. Supportive psychotherapy was formerly regarded as the “Cinderella of psychotherapies” [2] requiring no special training or abilities beyond common sense and interpersonal skills and a capacity for empathy [3]. However, it has gradually assumed a position of greater importance within residency training programs in psychiatry in the USA [3]. In addition, residents in Canada must now demonstrate proficiency in supportive therapy. In 2007, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the accreditation body, mandated supportive psychotherapy as a requirement for all residency training programs [4]. Following this recommendation, supportive psychotherapy became a formal component of the psychotherapy curriculum at our university. To meet this requirement, a new educational program was developed to teach supportive psychotherapy. Given that no previous program existed, this was purposefully created based on a foundation of the principles of adult learning. To date, there have been four resident groups who have completed the program. The authors conducted a program evaluation on the first three groups of residents asking the following: Is the educational design for teaching and learning supportive psychotherapy effective for residents to achieve the required competency? In this report, we share the details of the training program and the program evaluation we conducted. Description of the Program

Comparison of faculty versus structured peer-feedback for acquisitions of basic and intermediate-level surgical skills

PURPOSE Video feedback and faculty feedback has been shown to improve surgical performance; however, consistent access to faculty is challenging. We studied the utility of structured peer-feedback (PF) compared to faculty-feedback (FF) during acquisition of basic and intermediate surgical skills. METHODOLOGY Two randomized non-inferiority trials were conducted with 1st (n = 30) and 2nd year (n = 29) medical students learning skin-lesion excision and closure (S), and single-layer hand-sewn bowel anastomosis (B), respectively. Five attempts were performed. PF participants used an Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skills tool to guide feedback. Blinded raters assessed video-recorded performance, time and Integrity of the completed task were also assessed. RESULTS For both tasks performance by PF was comparable to FF (P = 0.111). Both groups improved significantly: performance (B:P < 0.0001, S:P = 0.035), time (B:P = 0.043, S:P < 0.0001) and integrity (B:P < 0.0001, S:P < 0.032). CONCLUSION Structured peer-feedback is equivalent to faculty-feedback in the acquisition of basic and intermediate surgical skills, giving students freedom to practice independently.

Sustainable professional activities

ISSN: 0142-159X (Print) 1466-187X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/imte20 Sustainable professional activities Karen Smith, Denise Stockley, Leslie Flynn & Laura McDiarmid To cite this article: Karen Smith, Denise Stockley, Leslie Flynn & Laura McDiarmid (2016) Sustainable professional activities, Medical Teacher, 38:8, 859-859, DOI: 10.1080/0142159X.2016.1204431 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2016.1204431