Culture, Confidence, and Crêpes Sucrées: Exploring Teacher Candidate Perceptions of Francophone Homestay Community Leadership Experiences

This study examines the perceptions of two groups of teacher candidates (TCs) who had participated in a 2-week, French immersion homestay Community Leadership Experience (CLE) in rural Trois-Pistoles, Quebec, Canada. Based on individual participant interviews, the co-authors, who also each served as a Faculty Facilitator for several of these CLE trips (2015-2020), present thematic findings surrounding the five components (homestay, school placements, community volunteering, cultural workshops/events, and Quebec City trip), and perceived benefits of the program including accessibility, language acquisition and improvement, cultural awareness, self-confidence, career planning re-assessment (division/program), and future employability advantages.

Simulation in mental health interprofessional education

Purpose: Mental health care involves multiple professionals from diverse backgrounds providing interdependent and complex services. Accordingly, care needs to be planned skillfully in partnership with health and social care providers and mental health service users. Working from an interprofessional lens enables professionals to work collaboratively to affect care that is safe and improves health outcomes. Yet, in practice there is often a disconnect between mental health care professionals that hinders collaborative practice and impacts the quality of care. Furthermore, stigmatization of mental illness continues to pervade health care professionals’ attitudes which serves to further compromise health outcomes. Interprofessional education (IPE) using simulation is proposed as an effective teaching and learning method to improve collaborative practice and decrease stigma amongst mental health care professionals in undergraduate education. Approach: Undergraduate nursing and pharmacy students from two universities participated in a one-day IPE event. During the event, students collaboratively interviewed standardized patients portraying mental health service users and developed an interprofessional plan of care. Faculty perspectives of the event were gathered to identify challenges and recommendations for ongoing implementation. Findings: Current literature and faculty facilitator feedback supports IPE using simulation as an effective teaching and learning strategy to develop therapeutic communication skills, address stigma amongst students prior to practice, clarify professional roles, and improve interprofessional collaboration. Faculty facilitator recommendations to improve the implementation of IPE with healthcare professionals during undergraduate education include early introduction of IPE, adequate preparation for students, realistic case scenarios, facilitator and standardized patient training, and funding to support events. Conclusion: The use of standardized patients in the context of interprofessional mental health education is a strategy with the potential to improve collaborative practice and address mental illness stigma amongst health care professionals. Further research with students is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of simulation in mental health IPE.

21st Century Problem-Based Learning

An account of 21st century problem-based learning (PBL) in preclinical medical education is provided through a detailed explanation of the overall process, a description of PBL case construction, and a brief consideration of related activities, including case wrap-up sessions and facilitator debriefing meetings. Composition of student PBL groups, the role of the faculty facilitator, and PBL decorum are also explored in this chapter. The implementation of PBL in a new medical school curriculum by rational design is compared to the introduction of PBL into an existing medical school curriculum by retrofit. Advantages and challenges of PBL are enumerated; a brief comparison of PBL with team-based learning (TBL) is also included.

FACILITATION AS AN INNOVATIONAL TECHNOLOGY OF PEDAGOGICAL CONFLICT MANAGEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The article analyzes actual ideas on the problem of managing pedagogical conflicts in higher education. Special emphasis is put on innovative management technologies. Exclusive attention is paid to the technology of facilitation in the management of pedagogical conflicts of domestic institutions of higher education. The contents, historical aspect, principles, stages, specificity of the facilitation are considered in detail. The functions, purpose, actions, techniques, techniques of the faculty-facilitator in solving conflict situations in the high school are generalized.The technology of pedagogical facilitation involves the use of various resource techniques. The most common of them are "Open Space", "World Café", "Future Search", "Appreciative Inquiry Summit", "Work Out".Working with a group of students while studying the discipline "Pedagogical Conflictology", the facilitator constantly supports two processes: solving problems and ensuring the procedure, positive atmosphere in the group.Summarizing all the above, we conclude that facilitation is an effective productive technology in the management of pedagogical conflicts in higher education. Its main content is put into the following statement of the facilitator: "I will help you - I know the purpose and we will find a way together for it!"The facilitator is the person who organizes the process, engages the participants, and structs the work of the group. Teacher-facilitator - a person who didactically competently and qualitatively provides a successful group communication of students. That is, it solves the tasks, contributing to the comfortable atmosphere and fruitfulness of the discussion. Facilitator transforms the communication process into a convenient and easy for all its participants, helps the group to understand the overall goal and maintains a positive group dynamics to achieve this goal in the process of discussion, while not protecting one of the positions or parties.Therefore, facilitation is an effective tool, a universal technology, the mastery of which greatly enhances the quality of mastering not only the discipline "Pedagogical conflictology", other training courses, but also the professional and personal competence and productivity of students in general, at the expense of saving time, resources and creative perspectives.

Improving Communication With Surrogate Decision-Makers: A Pilot Initiative

ABSTRACT Background Difficult conversations in medical care often occur between physicians and patients' surrogates, individuals entrusted with medical decisions for patients who lack the capacity to make them. Poor communication between patients' surrogates and physicians may exacerbate anxiety and guilt for surrogates, and may contribute to physician stress and burnout. Objective This pilot study assesses the effectiveness of an experiential learning workshop that was conducted in a clinical setting, and aimed at improving resident physician communication skills with a focus on surrogate decision-making. Methods From April through June 2016, we assessed internal medicine residents' baseline communication skills through an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) with actors representing standardized surrogates. After an intensive, 6-hour communication skills workshop, residents were reassessed via an OSCE on the same day. A faculty facilitator and the surrogate evaluated participants' communication skills via the expanded Gap Kalamazoo Consensus Statement Assessment Form. Wilcoxon signed rank tests (α of .05) compared mean pre- and postworkshop scores. Results Of 44 residents, 33 (75%) participated. Participants' average preworkshop OSCE scores (M = 3.3, SD = 0.9) were significantly lower than postworkshop scores (M = 4.3; SD = 0.8; Z = 4.193; P < .001; effect size r = 0.52). After the workshop, the majority of participants self-reported feeling “more confident.” Conclusions Residents' communication skills specific to surrogate decision-making benefit from focused interventions. Our pilot assessment of a workshop showed promise, and additionally demonstrated the feasibility of bringing OSCEs and simulated encounters into a busy clinical practice.

Fundamentals of Interprofessional Communication

This chapter presents the development, implementation and evaluation of a module on interprofessional communication skills that incorporates principles of problem-based learning, delivered entirely online. Learners focus initially on foundational concepts of relationship and patient centered care, the importance of self awareness and understanding their own professional values and biases, progressing towards teamworking to develop common patient care goals. The module faculty facilitator is essential to role model and foster interprofessional collaboration. Qualitative content analyses of discussion board postings across 29 students, supplemented by small-scale in-depth interviews and a focus group, reveal they are able to learn interprofessional communication skills online. The 10 students who undertook both module components completed a project evaluation form: there was 85.6% agreement that the module taught them about interprofessional education and 92.9% agreement that their knowledge of other health professionals’ perspectives increased. An online module can support the development of communication skills, but is recommended as one component of an overall interprofessional education curriculum.

ENDOCRINE PHYSIOLOGY IN A PATIENT-CENTERED LEARNING CURRICULUM

The medical curriculum at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences has recently been redesigned into a problem-based/traditional hybrid model that utilizes an integrated organ systems-based approach to teach basic and clinical sciences. The number of lecture hours in general has been greatly reduced, and, in particular, lecture hours in physiology have been reduced by 65%. Students learn basic science in small groups led by a faculty facilitator, and students are responsible for a great deal of their own teaching and learning. The curriculum is centered around patient cases and is called patient-centered learning (PCL). The curriculum includes traditional lectures and laboratories supporting faculty-generated learning objectives. Endocrine physiology is taught in year one, utilizing four weeks of patient cases that emphasize normal structure and function of endocrine systems. Endocrine physiology is revisited in year two, which is primarily focused on pathobiology. The PCL curriculum, with emphasis on the endocrine component, is described in detail along with key portions of an endocrine case.