Using photography to enhance GP trainees' reflective practice and professional development

Reflecting on insight and insights into reflection: a systematic review of insight and reflection in post graduate medical education

BACKGROUND

Clinicians recognize insight as important for safe independent medical practice. Clinical education literature focuses on self-reflection. The aim of this review is to describe how clinical educators conceptualize reflection and ask is it analogous to how clinicians conceptualize insight?

METHODS

Using PRISMA guidelines, a systematic review of the literature around insight and reflection in postgraduate medical education was undertaken. A thematic analysis of the concepts of insight and reflection was performed.

RESULTS

A total of 75 reports were included in the analysis. The literature focussed predominantly on reflection with little discussion of insight. Three main themes were generated: episodic reflection; cyclic reflection; reflection as a state. Reflection as a state seemed to be the professional quality most often aspired to but was less well defined in terms of educational interventions. When more than one model was described, it was often with a reflective state being the ideal that episodic or cyclic reflection may approximate. It is not clear that it is possible to progress up the hierarchy.

CONCLUSION

We present a novel description of a hierarchy from discrete episodes of reflection, to cyclic processes that involve reflection, through to a state in which the practitioner is reflective. There is no unified understanding of how an individual ascends this hierarchy, or a cohesive description of what insight is for an independent medical practitioner. This review highlights the need for research into how practicing clinicians conceptualize and characterize insight in their training and practice.

Expanding the advocacy lens: using photo-elicitation to capture patients' and physicians' perspectives about health advocacy

Heath advocacy (HA) remains a difficult competency to train and assess, in part because practicing physicians and learners carry uncertainty about what HA means and we are missing patients' perspectives about the role HA plays in their care. Visual methods are useful tools for exploring nebulous topics in health professions education; using these participatory approaches with physicians and patients might counteract the identified training challenges around HA and more importantly, remedy the exclusion of patient perspectives. In this paper we share the verbal and visual reflections of patients and physicians regarding their conceptualizations of, and engagement in 'everyday' advocacy. In doing so, we reveal some of HA's hidden dimensions and what their images uncovered about the role of advocacy in patient care. Constructivist grounded theory guided data collection and analysis. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and photo-elicitation, a visual research method that uses participant generated photographs to elicit participants knowledge and experiences around a particular topic. We invited patients living with chronic health conditions (n = 10) and physicians from diverse medical and surgical specialties (n = 14) to self-select photographs representing their experiences navigating HA in their personal and professional lives. Both groups found taking photographs useful for revealing the nuanced and circumstantial factors that either enabled or challenged their engagement in HA. While patients' photos highlighted their embodiment of HA, physicians' photos depicted HA as something quite elusive or as a complicated and daunting task. Photo-elicitation was a powerful tool in eliciting a diversity of perspectives that exist around the HA role and the work advocates perform; training programs might consider using visuals to augment teaching for this challenging competency.

Using MRI art, poetry, photography and patient narratives to bridge clinical and human experiences of stroke recovery

Integrating co-produced humanities-based pedagogy into patient and workforce education is of growing interest. The aim of our Depth of Field: Exploring Stroke Recovery project grew from a strong commitment to use patients' lived experiences as a voice to educate new stroke patients and the health professional staff who will care for them. The aim of the initial Quality Improvement project at a West Australian Stroke Rehabilitation Unit (SRU) was to co-produce a reflective learning resource with stroke patients and their families to help navigate the stroke recovery journey. A series of artefacts (documentary-style photographs, audio-narrated vignettes, MRI images and poetry) were collected from four stroke patients and their families at differing stages of recovery over 12 months as they recounted the honest and raw reality of what life is really like following a stroke. These artefacts were used in a pilot qualitative project to explore new stroke patients, their families and SRU health professional staff perceptions towards the artefacts in order to inform the final educational resource. These findings enhance our understandings of how we can use art and patient (healthcare consumers) voice to widen the lens of stroke recovery and provides a valuable template to co-produce peer-to-peer and health professions education reflective learning resources to promote more human- centred approaches to care.

The informal curriculum of family medicine - what does it entail and how is it taught to residents? A systematic review

Background

The informal curriculum is a seemingly well-explored concept in the realm of medical education. However, it is a concept with multiple definitions and the term “the hidden curriculum” is often used interchangeably. In short, they both refer to the implicit learning taking place outside the formal curriculum, encompassing both a trickling down effect of organizational values and attitudes passed on by a mentor or colleague. While the informal curriculum is a recurrent theme in medical education literature; it is seldom discussed in Family Medicine. As the informal curriculum is likely to be highly influential in the forming of future family practitioners, our aim was to explore the area further, with respect to the following: which elements of the informal curriculum are applicable in a Family Medicine context and what educational interventions for Family Medicine residents, visualizing the various educational elements of it, have been performed?

Methods

We conducted a systematic review comprising iterative literature searches and a narrative synthesis of the results.

Results

Twenty articles, published between 2000 and 2019, were included in the analysis which resulted in three partly interrelated themes comprising the informal curriculum in Family Medicine: gaining cultural competence, achieving medical professionalism and dealing with uncertainty. The themes on cultural competence and uncertainty seemed to be more contextual than professionalism, the latter being discussed in relation to the informal curriculum across other medical disciplines as well. Formalized training for Family Medicine residents in aspects of the informal curriculum appeared to be lacking, and in general, the quality of the few interventional studies found was low.

Conclusions

Important aspects of being a family practitioner, such as cultural competence and dealing with uncertainty, are learned through a context-dependent informal curriculum. In order to ensure a more uniform base for all residents and to reduce the impact of the individual supervisor’s preferences, complementary formalized training would be beneficial. However, to date there are too few studies published to conclude how to best teach the informal curriculum.

Trial registration

The systematic review was registered with Prospero; registration number CRD42018104819.

Can the arts enhance postgraduate GP training?

The value of arts-based medical education is becoming increasingly well established in undergraduate curricula. However, little is known about its value, and acceptability, to qualified doctors undertaking postgraduate training. In this work we examined GP trainees' views on whether arts-based education was useful for their professional development and, if so, what they perceived its value to be. All first and second year GP trainees on the Dorset Vocational Training Scheme attended a one day course which showcased how the arts (film, poetry, painting, photography, theatre) could enhance their professional development as doctors. GP trainees rated the day as interesting, enjoyable and thought proving. The majority felt that the arts could contribute to making them more competent and humane doctors. Following this, we ran a mandatory six months arts based course for six GP trainees, and evaluated their feedback through qualitative analysis of a focus group discussion. Overall, GP trainees found the course enjoyable and valuable to their learning. It not only gave them a deeper appreciation of the patient's perspective, but also encouraged them to think about their own health and wellbeing.