Purposeful involvement of experts by experience

BACKGROUND: There is a growing requirement from professional bodies in the UK that health and social care education must include the voice of experts by experience (EbE). Active steps have been taken at the international level in order to truly embed their involvement. In parallel with this development, there is compounding evidence collated globally that links interprofessional education (IPE) to improved health outcomes. As the involvement of EbE plays a central role in IPE there is an increased expectation for teachers to be able to successfully involve EbE in IPE and other health education. ISSUE: Although there is some guidance available to teachers on how to involve EbE in pre-registration health and social care education, less guidance is available on how to involve EbE in complex educational interventions, such as IPE. Hence the need for faculty member development. APPROACH: The Centre for Interprofessional Practice (CIPP) has involved nearly 350 EbE in a variety of IPE since 2005. This review draws on insights from the CIPP to identify a number of practice points for teachers who wish to involve EbE in IPE, or as part of education for their specific profession. The practice points are endorsed by EbE and discussed in light of initiatives and evidence reported by others in the literature. To help contextualise and make use of these practice points they were grouped according to the presage-process-product (3P) model. This article can inform faculty member development aimed at new or senior educators, and our insights are equally applicable to both uni- and interprofessional contexts

Service user involvement in an undergraduate nursing programme

This article highlights the impacts that service user involvement can have on the education of UK undergraduate student mental health nurses both personally and professionally. It reports the findings from a short module evaluation of a collaboratively delivered theory unit using a qualitative approach. It reports the findings from a short module evaluation of a collaboratively delivered theory unit using a qualitative approach embracing two focus groups. The findings from the two focus groups highlight that the service user input (‘expert by experience’) offered a positive learning experience for the students, enabled them to appreciate the meaning of recovery and hope, facilitated the identification as to the importance of their role in terms of connecting meaningfully with those they are supporting plus reconsidering key priorities for practice. They suggest also that there is theory/practice gap reduction as students were able to connect the service user narratives to the evidence base for deeper understanding and application. Although only a brief evaluation of a short theory module within a wider mental health programme including a limited number of students, the findings echo the wider literature and offer further rationale to support direct service user involvement in mental health education across other professions, perhaps interesting at this time as increasingly, learning/teaching programmes implement blended learning with significant online teaching and less face to face facilitation of learning. This article highlights the positive impact not only of service user input into healthcare education but also the benevolent influence skilled narratives can have as a pedagogical approach for learning. Although there is much in the literature as to the benefits for student learning in involving service users within HEI education, there is limited information as to ‘how’ and ‘why’ this is the case, this article seeks to bridge that ga

Social work training or social work education? An approach to curriculum design

Population ageing, economic circumstances, and human behaviour are placing social welfare systems under great strain. In England extensive reform of the social work profession is taking place. Training curricula are being redesigned in the context of new standards of competence for social workers – the Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF). Students must be equipped on qualifying to address an extensive range of human problems, presenting major challenges to educators. Critical theory suggests an approach to tackle one such challenge – selecting the essential content required for areas of particular practice. Teaching on social work with older people is used to illustrate this. Habermas’ theory of cognitive interests highlights the different professional roles served by the social work knowledge base - instrumental, interpretive, and emancipatory. Howe’s application of sociological theory distinguished four social work roles corresponding to these. It is suggested that curriculum design decisions must enable practitioners to operate in each. When preparing students to work with older people, educators therefore need to include interpretive and emancipatory perspectives, and not construct social work purely as an instrumental response to problems older people present. This approach provides one useful rationale for curriculum design decisions, which is applicable to other areas of practice, and to contexts outside England

Response to the article by Mitchell, P., Nightingale, J., and Reeves, P. (2019). Competence to capability: An integrated career framework for sonographers. Radiography

We would like to congratulate Mitchell, Nightingale and Reeves for their article on ‘Competence to capability: An integrated career framework for sonographers’ for providing a suggested framework for skills escalation for sonographers.1 This is particularly relevant to the current work being undertaken by Health Education England (HEE) to attempt to address the sonographer shortages in England2 and challenges faced by the introduction of a wider range of entry points to ultrasound practice

Adopting a blended approach to learning: experiences from radiography at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh

The perspective of the radiography teaching team at Queen Margaret University (QMU) was that a transmission mode of programme delivery was sub-optimal in helping students to learn and make links between theory and practice. Programme redesign adopted a blended learning approach with both face-to-face and online learning aimed at enhancing the students’ control over their own learning. Online tasks within Web Classroom Tools (WebCT) were used as an integral part of careful programme design, which resulted in a programme enabling synthesis of the skills, knowledge and competencies acquired in the academic and clinical environments. With the move towards a more learner-centred, blended educational experience for the students the lecturers’ role shifted to that of facilitator with WebCT providing the tutor with a more transparent view of student learning. Lecturers plan learning activities that build upon the skills students have developed through learning in groups, online and in class. The explicit connections that now exist between the academic programme and the opportunities for applying knowledge in practice allow students to engage more deeply in their learning