Teaching and Assessing Soft Skills for Health and Education Professionals: A Scoping Review

Soft skills are a collection of abilities instrumental to one being a successful professional. Soft skills are knowing why, what, when, and where to perform specific technical, hard skills. Traditionally, universities and other professional training providers have focused on teaching hard skills, relying on graduates to learn necessary soft skills on the job or through personal experiences. With more professional training requiring tertiary education and less work experience, a skills gap has developed between labour markets and professional training providers. A scoping review was conducted to answer two research questions: How are soft skills conceptualised and taught to health and education professionals? How are soft skills assessed for health and education professionals? The PAGER framework was utilised to present and synthesise the scoping review results. Eight themes emerged from the patterning analysis and data synthesis: Lack of definitions of soft skills; What soft skills are taught; Methods of teaching soft skills; Curriculum: Embedded vs. stand-alone courses; Use of digital tools; Assessment of soft skills; Variation of assessment tools; Limited regard for cultural competency, diversity, equality, and inclusion. These themes are discussed in relation to advances, gaps, evidence for practice, and research recommendations

Digital undergraduate medical education and patient and carer involvement: a rapid systematic review of current practice

BACKGROUND: Involving patients and carers in medical students' learning aims to centralise the perspective of healthcare users and supports our future medical workforce in the development of key skills. Medical schools are increasingly using digital technology for teaching and it is timely to understand how to maintain patient and carer involvement in this context. METHODS: Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid EMBASE and medRxiv were searched in October 2020 and reference lists of key articles were hand searched. Eligible studies reported authentic patient or carer involvement in undergraduate medical education where technology was also used. Study quality was assessed by the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT). Levels of patient or carer involvement were assessed using Towle et al.'s (2010) taxonomy, from Level 1 (lowest level) to Level 6 (highest level). RESULTS: Twenty studies were included in this systematic review. In 70% of studies, patients and carers featured in video or web-based case scenarios with no interaction between healthcare users and students. The remaining 30% of studies reported real-time interactions between students and patients via remote clinical encounters. Digital teaching sessions involving patients or carers were perceived to be valuable by students and educators, and increased student engagement, patient-centred attitudes, clinical knowledge, and communication skills. No studies reported the perspective of patients or carers. DISCUSSION: Digital technology has not yet driven higher levels of patient and carer involvement in medical training. "Live" interactions between students and patients are becoming more common but challenges need addressing to ensure positive experiences for all involved. Future teaching should enhance the role of patients and carers in medical education and support them to overcome any potential barriers to doing so remotely

Development of a virtual reality platform as a training tool using gaming software

Virtual Reality (VR) is a well-known technology that is applied in many areas including education, medical, manufacturing etc. In the engineering field, VR is commonly used as a toolkit to train humans to perform complex tasks such as aircraft piloting, chemical handling etc. However, the practicality of using gaming software as a VR platform for training purposes needs to be investigated. In this paper, the DarkBASIC Professional (DBPro) gaming software was applied as a VR platform to train humans' adaptability towards new environments. The design of the structure of the VR platform using DBPro is described together with the main elements including 3D modeling, mapping, lighting and sound effects, and player's control. A comparison between the real world and the VR platform was evaluated. Ten selected subjects conveyed positive feedback on the realism of the VR platform through the survey. The results show that the time taken to complete a task was reduced up to 60% after the subjects performed the VR training in advance. It is hoped that the VR platform will support VR training with low development costs and an open source concept

Towards improving soft skills of medical education in the 21st century: A literature review

Global challenge forced medical education to be transformative in preparing the future health care professional. Student-centered learning (SCL) has been regarded as the most suitable medical curriculum approach to meet the health care demand. Indonesia, with its hierarchical and collectivistic culture, has long implemented SCL. The necessary skills are needed to be identified to improve the medical curriculum in Indonesia. We did a literature review to generate soft skills for the health care professionals. We distributed the list to stakeholders and medical teachers for a two-round Delphi study. We identify 26 soft skills through literature review. The Delphi study's first-round yielded 95 responses comparing the expectation and reality of the 26 soft skills in the current medical curriculum. The second round Delphi study was performed towards the similar participants to gather the final set of soft skills recommended for curriculum improvement in medical and health professions education. Soft skills, though considered necessary, are not well-understood yet. The unfamiliarity influenced the irresolute delivery of soft skills in medical schools. Faculty developments are recommended to improve the understanding and capability of teachers to facilitate the learning of soft skills

CAN YOU TALK YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS? AN EDUCATIONAL ESCAPE ROOM

Despite being a top healthcare priority, patient safety remains a problem in the U.S. with hundreds of thousands of annual patient deaths due to medical errors. Communication breakdowns within the healthcare team are a key factor in poor patient outcomes and in relatively low retention rates among healthcare professionals, especially nurses. To prepare nursing students for a successful entry into the profession, nurse educators must consider alternate strategies for teaching communication skills to a new generation of students. This qualitative study explored the use of a game-based escape room as part of a multi-part communication lesson plan and its impact on student perceptions of the value of communication in healthcare. The data for the current study was collected from a small sample of nursing students representing multiple generations at a Midwestern community college. The study found that the educational escape room raised awareness among nursing students of the importance of communication to a healthcare team. It also highlighted the greater affinity of younger students for immersive game approaches in education. These findings indicate the need and opportunity of including non-traditional teaching methods in nursing curriculum tailored for the unique learning profiles of a new generation of nursing students

Academic Impressions, 2014

https://nsuworks.nova.edu/hpd_cdm_newsletters/1007/thumbnail.jp

An innovative and authentic way of learning how to consult remotely in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Acknowledgements We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the GP tutors and medical students who were involved in this teaching.We would also like to thank Dr Christine Kay and the University of Aberdeen for providing PC with funding in the form of the Summer Medical Education Scholarship.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Pharmacy Leadership and Management: A new high fidelity simulation to prepare students for their future practise

Objective: To design and deliver a synoptic experiential learning experience drawing on leadership and management skills coupled with clinical problem solving in a high fidelity simulation. Our vision is to produce world leading pharmacists by providing them with diverse opportunities to demonstrate and expand their knowledge, skills and behaviours and prepare them for the changing healthcare landscape of the future. Design: Pharmacy Leadership and Management (PLM) is based on the successful GIMMICS consortia blueprint. Development was informed by stakeholder events with local and national health commissioners, professionals, experts, patients and academic staff. Teams of six final-year students run their own primary care-based pharmacy business competing against four others over four blocks of three days through the year. Simulated patients and academics deliver approximately 180 acute scenarios over the module to each team, comprising face-to-face, telephone and email queries. Teams also have longer term challenges including development new services and tendering for contracts. The curriculum covers all areas of practice including communication with patients and professionals, business and people development, medicines supply, clinical practice, governance and patient safety and health promotion and public health. Assessment: Assessment uses a multi-format approach of OSCE for skills, reflective portfolio for longer term and attitudinal attributes and an online assessment for knowledge based elements. Conclusion: In this paper, we will present the development of this educational experience and describe our implementation and operationalisation of this highly complex module

The Stakeholder Experience of a large scale final year undergraduate social community research project

Objective: In 2014 The School of Pharmacy at the University of Nottingham needed to deliver individual research methods supervision by a small number of academic staff to a large number of final year students. There are limited opportunities for students to gain patient facing experience on this course. The learning initiative was designed to meet these needs. Design: Dissertation students were offered a unique opportunity to participate in a large scale community pharmacy research project. Eighty-two students collected standardised data from patients across 36 pharmacies in the Greater Nottingham area. Local data collection supervision was provided by the local community pharmacists at the data collection sites. Academic supervision was provided to students using a hub and spoke model with ‘hub’ supervision provided by two members of staff offering broad methodological support to the cohort. This was further supported by local supervisors providing individualised ‘spoke’ support to students. Students were able to examine and report on their local results. The data generated overall provides a mass dataset for further examination by academics. An independent evaluation of stakeholder experience was undertaken. Assessment: Students were assessed by a poster presentation and written report summarising one segment of local analysis. Conclusion: Academics saw the hub and spoke model of supervision as innovative and a positive and efficient use of their time. All participating stakeholders feel that students benefit from the timely development of their transferable skills for their professional career; skills cited as requirements for pharmacy education by the GPhC (2011)