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

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

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

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

True gender ratios and stereotype rating norms

We present a study comparing, in English, perceived distributions of men and women in 422 named occupations with actual real world distributions. The first set of data was obtained from previous a large-scale norming study, whereas the second set was mostly drawn from UK governmental sources. In total, real world ratios for 290 occupations were obtained for our perceive vs. real world comparison, of which 205 were deemed to be unproblematic. The means for the two sources were similar and the correlation between them was high, suggesting that people are generally accurate at judging real gender ratios, though there were some notable exceptions. Beside this correlation, some interesting patterns emerged from the two sources, suggesting some response strategies when people complete norming studies. We discuss these patterns in terms of the way real world data might complement norming studies in determining gender stereotypicality

The influence of portfolio aims and structure on student attitudes towards portfolios as a learning tool: A Scoping Review

Background: Portfolios are widely used in undergraduate health professional education, however the majority of literature suggests that these are poorly received by students, in terms of being an effective learning tool. Objectives: to evaluate whether the aims/purpose or structure/level of standardisation/content of student portfolios influences their attitudes to and perceptions of its use as a learning tool. Major Findings: Aims/purpose and structure/level of standardisation/content of portfolios were analysed in relation to student responses in order to determine any relationship between these. The level of information provided in the studies was variable, making analysis difficult, however there appeared to be no clear link between any of these factors and student responses. The interplay of level of support and guidance, the time required for completion of the portfolio, and the role of assessment appear to have the greatest influence on student views. Conclusions: Considering the wide use of portfolios in health professional education, student support for these is limited, and further research is required to determine if alternative approaches to portfolio learning can positively influence student attitudes and perceptions