Peer Assessment of Professionalism Attributes

Background: Peer Assessment can support the development of professionalism by providing feedback that enables learners to reflect on their professional behavioural attributes. Approach: We developed and implemented an innovative online peer assessment and feedback tool. Students were encouraged to nominate 12 peer assessors to anonymously conduct their assessment. Assessors were presented with a list of 32 adjectives that described professional behavioural attributes within four domains (integrity, conscientiousness, agreeableness and resilience), and asked to rate the student by selecting a minimum of 2 adjectives in each domain and to provide free-text comments. The feedback was presented as a collated word cloud and free-text comments. All students had the opportunity to discuss their profile with a staff member. Evaluation: Our mixed-methods evaluation found that all students participated and they valued the peer assessment and feedback process. Although the assessment was formative and confidential, students were reluctant to provide negative comments about their peers. ‘Disengaged’, ‘Aloof’ and ‘Argumentative’ were the most likely negative adjectives that indicated students with low level professionalism concerns. Implications: Future development will focus on introducing students who can act as peer champions for the process and repeating the peer assessment over time to identify change in professionalism development

Developing good practice by understanding how UK medical schools address low level concerns: a survey study

In the literature, a distinction is made between low-level concerns and what is regarded as fitness to practise concerns. The General Medical Council expects all UK medical schools to have a transparent process in place about how concerns about its medical students are identified monitored and responded to. However, internationally, there is currently no well-established consensus on what is good practice in managing low-level concerns. Furthermore, currently, there is little information on how the UK medical schools vary in the processes they implement to monitor and respond to low-level concerns of their students. An online survey was developed and informed by the literature and sent to all UK medical schools to better understand their low-level concerns process. Of 39 medical schools invited, 25 participated. The data indicate variations between medical schools in the processes implemented. These variations can potentially influence the quality of the data; for example, whether there is a named person co-ordinating concerns between medical schools and placement providers. Furthermore, the data identify primary-care-based learning as offering missed opportunities where low-level concerns could be picked up. Key areas identified within the data for further work include how to quality assure that processes are equitable and how to bring more consistency to what sanctions are common and how these are decided up on

Clinicians' perspectives on the duty of candour: Implications for medical ethics education

© The Author(s) 2017. Content: Truth-telling is an integral part of medical practice in many parts of the world. However, recent public inquiries, including the Francis Inquiry reveal that a duty of candour in practise, are at times compromised. Consequently, the duty of candour became a statutory requirement in England. This study aimed to explore clinicians’ perspectives of the implications of the legislation for medical ethics education, as raising standards to improve patient safety remains an international concern. Methods: One-to-one interviews with clinical educators from various specialties who contribute to the MBChB programme at the authors’ university. Once data saturation had been assessed, transcripts were analysed using a thematic approach by the following concurrent activities: data reduction and coding into themes. Example quotations are used to illustrate that key themes are grounded in the data. Results: Eleven clinical educators were interviewed; three general practitioners, six physicians and two surgeons. Thematic analysis identified three key themes; reaction to legislation, barriers to implementation and areas of the medical curriculum that can be further developed to better prepare future doctors. Conclusions: Currently, the legislation is not reaching all frontline staff; there remains a lack of appropriate training and teaching on the legislation that responds to the perceived challenges to implementing candour. These challenges include tensions in the clinical workplace and concerns about the patient’s best interests conflicting with requirements of the legislation. Both undergraduate and postgraduate curricula need to integrate teaching on the implications of the legislation and take a practice based approach in doing so

Developing a Serious Game for Nurse Education

Future nursing education is challenged to develop innovative and effective programs that align with current changes in health care and to educate nurses with a high level of clinical reasoning skills, evidence-based knowledge, and professional autonomy. Serious games (SGs) are computer-based simulations that combine knowledge and skills development with video game-playing aspects to enable active, experiential, situated, and problem-based learning. In a PhD project, a video-based SG was developed to teach nursing students nursing care for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in home health care and hospital settings. The current article summarizes the process of the SG development and evaluation

A model of professional self-identity formation in student doctors and dentists: a mixed method study.

BACKGROUND: Professional self-identity [PSI] can be defined as the degree to which an individual identifies with his or her professional group. Several authors have called for a better understanding of the processes by which healthcare students develop their professional identities, and suggested helpful theoretical frameworks borrowed from the social science and psychology literature. However to our knowledge, there has been little empirical work examining these processes in actual healthcare students, and we are aware of no data driven description of PSI development in healthcare students. Here, we report a data driven model of PSI formation in healthcare students. METHODS: We interviewed 17 student doctors and dentists who had indicated, on a tracking questionnaire, the most substantial changes in their PSI. We analysed their perceptions of the experiences that had influenced their PSI, to develop a descriptive model. Both the primary coder and the secondary coder considered the data without reference to the existing literature; i.e. we used a bottom up approach rather than a top down approach. RESULTS: The results indicate that two overlapping frames of reference affect PSI formation: the students' self-perception and their perception of the professional role. They are 'learning' both; neither is static. Underpinning those two learning processes, the following key mechanisms operated: [1] When students are allowed to participate in the professional role they learn by trying out their knowledge and skill in the real world and finding out to what extent they work, and by trying to visualise themselves in the role. [2] When others acknowledge students as quasi-professionals they experience transference and may respond with counter-transference by changing to meet expectations or fulfil a prototype. [3] Students may also dry-run their professional role (i.e., independent practice of professional activities) in a safe setting when invited. CONCLUSIONS: Students' experiences, and their perceptions of those experiences, can be evaluated through a simple model that describes and organises the influences and mechanisms affecting PSI. This empirical model is discussed in the light of prevalent frameworks from the social science and psychology literature

Belongingness and its implications for undergraduate health professions education: a scoping review.

Belongingness is well recognised within higher education to have an important influence on the performance and well-being of learners. There appears to be little awareness of its importance in undergraduate health professions education. To identify how belongingness has been defined and measured, its impact on the performance and well-being of learners, and how it can be fostered in educational settings. A scoping review to map the published research in the wider higher education literature (including undergraduate health professions education). PubMed and ERIC were used. Only peer-reviewed articles in the English Language between 1996 and 2016 were included. Fifty-one relevant articles were identified with 16 related to nurse clinical education. No studies were found in undergraduate medical education or in primary care educational settings. Common features were identified within the several definitions of belongingness. A thematic analysis of articles revealed that belongingness has an important role in student motivation and learning identity formation and in facilitating positive mental health. The scoping review highlighted the importance of belongingness in higher and undergraduate health professions education, with implications for future practice and policy. Further research is recommended. There are important implications for curriculum development and delivery, including clinical placements; within secondary and primary care health professional education

A response to Simpson and Hope’s From policy to practice: Measuring success in widening participation

We consider that Sen’s capability approach can provide the necessary small-level of granularity for measuring the success of widening participation policies and can complement other indicators, such as retention rates or academic scores. This personalised evaluation perspective also provides the essential social justice focus to the measurement process, which is aligned to the social justice endeavour of widening participation. <br/