Lynette R. Goldberg

Relationship between participants' level of education and engagement in their completion of the Understanding Dementia Massive Open Online Course.

BackgroundThe completion rates for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) generally are low (5-10%) and have been reported to favour participants with higher (typically tertiary-level) education. Despite these factors, the flexible learning offered by a MOOC has the potential to provide an accessible educational environment for a broad spectrum of participants. In this regard, the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre has developed a MOOC on dementia that is evidence-based and intended to address this emerging major global public health issue by providing educational resources to a broad range of caregivers, people with dementia, and health care professionals.MethodsThe Understanding Dementia MOOC was designed specifically to appeal to, and support, adult learners with a limited educational background. The nine-week course was presented in three units. Participants passed a quiz at the end of each unit to continue through the course. A series of discussion boards facilitated peer-to-peer interactions. A separate “Ask an Expert” discussion board also was established for each unit where participants posted questions and faculty with expertise in the area responded.ResultsAlmost 10,000 people from 65 countries registered; 4,409 registrants engaged in the discussion boards, and 3,624 (38%) completed the course. Participants’ level of education ranged from postgraduate study to a primary (elementary) school education. Participants without a university education (vocational certificate and below) were as likely as those with a university education to complete the course (χ2 = 2.35, df = 6, p = 0.88) and to engage in the online discussions (F[6, 3799] = 0.85, p = 0.54). Further, participants who completed the MOOC engaged in significantly more discussion board posts than participants who did not complete the course (t = 39.60, df = 4407, p <0.001).ConclusionsThe high completion rate and level of engagement of participants across a broad spectrum of levels of education suggest that MOOCs can be successfully developed and delivered to students from diverse educational backgrounds. The high participation rate also highlights the combination of MOOC design as well as the scale of unmet need for quality dementia education.

Considering accreditation in gerontology: the importance of interprofessional collaborative competencies to ensure quality health care for older adults.

The health care needs of older adults can be complex and multifaceted. Safe, effective, equitable, and person-centered service provision relies on skilled interprofessional, team-based practice. Too often, students seeking a career specializing in gerontology are not exposed to such interprofessional, team-based learning and practice during their coursework. This article details the core interprofessional collaborative competencies that need to be an integral component of any program providing quality education on issues in aging.

Minimal Hearing Impairment: Major Myths with More Than Minimal Implications

This article addresses five commonly stated misperceptions concerning the effects of minimal hearing loss on the education of children. Helping educators and other professionals recognize these and other possible misperceptions is the first step in appropriately educating children with minimal hearing loss. Making educators and other professionals aware of the need for proper diagnoses and management strategies is crucial for the achievement of effective educational outcomes for these children. Furthermore, resolving these misperceptions will assist in reducing the financial and psychosocial costs frequently associated with the education of these children.

Hydration in older adults: The contribution of bioelectrical impedance analysis

Abstract The sensory and gastrointestinal changes that occur with ageing affect older adults’ food and liquid intake. Any decreased liquid intake increases the risk for dehydration. This increased dehydration risk is compounded in older adults with dysphagia. The availability of a non-invasive and easily administered way to document hydration levels in older adults is critical, particularly for adults in residential care. This pilot study investigated the contribution of bioelectrical impedance analysis to measure hydration in 19 older women in residential care: 13 who viewed themselves as healthy and six with dysphagia. Mann-Whitney U analyses documented no significant between-group differences for Total Body Water (TBW), Fat Free Mass (FFM), Fat Mass (FM), and percentage Body Fat (%BF). However, when compared to previously published data for age-matched women, the TBW and FFM values of the two participant groups were notably less, and FM and %BF values were notably greater than expected. If results are confirmed through continued investigation, such findings may suggest that long-term care facilities are unique environments in which all older residents can be considered at-risk for dehydration and support the use of BIA as a non-invasive tool to assess and monitor their hydration status.

Teachers' Perceptions About Minimal Hearing Loss: A Role for Educational Audiologists

A 25-item survey was administered to 45 teachers to identify what they knew about Minimal Hearing Loss (MHL) and to verify or refute five possible misperceptions reported earlier by Goldberg and McCormick Richburg (2004). Results support the importance of an educational audiologist on the service delivery team to help teachers understand the ramifications of MHL and assist in meeting the educational and psychosocial needs of students with this type of loss. Results also suggest areas for in-service education for classroom teachers, especially regarding the issue of preferential seating.

Infusing an inter‐professional and inter‐university perspective into healthcare education

A national (USA) student‐led, case‐based CLinician/Administrator Relationship Improvement OrganizatioN (CLARION) competition focuses students in medical and related healthcare programs on the provision of healthcare that is safe, timely, equitable, patient‐centred, effective and efficient. Students work in four‐person, inter‐professional teams to research and analyse a designated case. They then present their findings and recommendations to a panel of independent judges. Students, with support from their faculty advisors, approach the case as they see fit. Following initial participation in this CLARION competition, an inter‐professional team of students from two universities and their advisory faculty developed a two‐semester, pre‐competition course as a model to facilitate transformation in healthcare education. The course is theoretical, empirical and practical. It has multiple levels of learning and is designed to mentor students, develop faculty, measure learning outcomes and stimulate administrators in higher education to think creatively about curriculum development across disciplines. This integrated and inter‐professional approach is pivotal in healthcare education to ensure students learn safe and evidence‐based clinical practice that meets the highest standards for quality care.

The Importance of Interprofessional Education for Students in Communication Sciences and Disorders.

Interprofessional education (IPE) is recognized as a critical component in preparing students for effective interprofessional practice in health care. IPE is supported by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and students’ competence in interprofessional practice is expected by clinical supervisors for effective work in any setting, whether that setting is medically or educationally oriented. IPE thus needs to be integrated into the curriculum of academic programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders and supported by clinicians in the field. This short tutorial is designed to acquaint readers with the concept of IPE, the collaborative competencies that students develop, available learning models, the importance of measuring the effectiveness of any interprofessional intervention, and ongoing challenges that need to be addressed to facilitate the implementation of this valuable learning strategy.

Nursing identity and patient-centredness in scholarly health services research: a computational text analysis of PubMed abstracts 1986–2013

BackgroundThe most important and contested element of nursing identity may be the patient-centredness of nursing, though this concept is not well-treated in the nursing identity literature. More conceptually-based mapping of nursing identity constructs are needed to help nurses shape their identity. The field of computational text analytics offers new opportunities to scrutinise how growing disciplines such as health services research construct nursing identity. This paper maps the conceptual content of scholarly health services research in PubMed as it relates to the patient-centeredness of nursing.MethodsComputational text analytics software was used to analyse all health services abstracts in the database PubMed since 1986. Abstracts were treated as indicative of the content of health services research. The database PubMed was searched for all research papers using the term “service” or “services” in the abstract or keywords for the period 01/01/1986 to 30/06/2013. A total of 234,926 abstracts were obtained. Leximancer software was used in 1) mapping of 4,144,458 instances of 107 concepts; 2) analysis of 106 paired concept co-occurrences for the nursing concept; and 3) sentiment analysis of the nursing concept versus patient, family and community concepts, and clinical concepts.ResultsNursing is constructed within quality assurance or service implementation or workforce development concepts. It is relatively disconnected from patient, family or community care concepts.ConclusionsFor those who agree that patient-centredness should be a part of nursing identity in practice, this study suggests that there is a need for development of health services research into both the nature of the caring construct in nursing identity and its expression in practice. More fundamentally, the study raises questions about whether health services research cultures even value the politically popular idea of nurses as patient-centred caregivers and whether they should.

Interprofessional curriculum development achieves results: Initial evidence from a dementia-care protocol

ABSTRACT This report describes the outcomes of a five-day, protocol-based interprofessional education (IPE) initiative to prepare undergraduate medical, nursing, and paramedic students for collaborative work with adults with dementia. Clinical placements provided a structured and supervised IPE experience for 127 students in two Residential Aged Care Facilities (RACFs) in Hobart, Australia, during 2013 and 2014. The IPE activity was based on a seven-step protocol formulated by an interprofessional team of educators and aged care practitioners that revolved around collaborative assessments of adults with complex health needs. This article describes the IPE protocol and presents the results of a pre- and post-placement attitude questionnaire and knowledge quiz administered to evaluate student attitudes towards IPE and knowledge of dementia. Data suggest that a five-day, supervised, and protocol-based IPE experience in a dementia-care setting can inculcate positive changes in student attitudes about collaborative practice and may encourage dementia-related learning outcomes.

Student reflections following exposure to a case-based interprofessional learning experience: preliminary findings

Abstract This study analyzed students’ written reflections following their initial exposure to interprofessional teamwork in case-based problem-solving. A three-hour seminar featuring three sequenced scenarios was developed and offered 12-times over two semesters. A total of 305 students from a variety of healthcare programs worked together with standardized patients in an on-campus laboratory simulating hospital ward and rehabilitation settings. A thematic analysis of students’ reflections showed that they valued the shared learning and realistic case study. However, they felt the experience would be strengthened by working in smaller, more representative teams that included students from medicine, psychology, and social work to enable more effective communication and comprehensive case discussion. While useful for future planning, the identified themes did not enable a comparative statistical analysis of what students found helpful and difficult and a re-coding of students’ responses now is underway. Implications for measuring the effectiveness of future interprofessional case-based learning center on addressing the identified weaknesses, and establishing a research design that enables a comparison of pre- and post-seminar data, and the effectiveness of the IPE experience compared to profession-specific experiences.