The role of personal resilience and personality traits of healthcare students on their attitudes towards interprofessional collaboration

BACKGROUND

Interprofessional collaboration (IPC) improves communication between healthcare workers and healthcare delivery. Interprofessional education (IPE) is essential in preparing healthcare students for cooperating with other healthcare disciplines in a real work setting. Although higher education settings have a responsibility to provide collaborative healthcare practice to students, IPE has not yet been prompted worldwide as a formal division in health professional education and in Israel IPE among health professions students is scarce.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the attitudes of health professions students towards IPC in correlation with their personal resilience and personality traits.

DESIGN

A descriptive cross-sectional design was used.

SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS

Participants were fourth year nursing, occupational therapy (OT), and physical therapy students studying in an academic undergraduate program at a School of Health Professions in a central university in Israel.

METHODS

Attitudes were assessed with a questionnaire consisting of the Interdisciplinary Education Perception Scale, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, the Big Five Inventory of personality dimensions, and a question evaluating students' experience with the PBL (Problem-Based Learning) method.

RESULTS

Questionnaires were completed by 184 health professions students. Nursing students' perception of actual cooperation with other professions and their perceived competency and autonomy in their profession were slightly lower than those of other students. Among nursing students, positive correlations were found between competency & autonomy and resilience (p<0.01) and between competency & autonomy and agreeableness (p<0.05). Positive correlations were also found between their perception of actual cooperation with other professions and: resilience (p<0.01), agreeableness (p<0.05), conscientiousness (p<0.05), and openness (p<0.05). Only OT students were familiar with and experienced in the PBL method. This experience with PBL was found correlated with more positive attitudes towards competency and autonomy in the profession and higher positive perception of actual cooperation with other professions.

CONCLUSIONS

IPE, including PBL, should be integrated in health professions students' training.

Qualifying as an Occupational Therapist: An Educational Journey from Ward-Based to Workplace Learning

This article reviews the ways in which occupational therapy qualifying programmes in the United Kingdom have changed over time as a result of political, sociological, professional and educational influences on the curriculum. Historically, professional and educational strategies were embedded in a set curriculum for a diploma qualification in occupational therapy. Critical observations about the rigidity of training methods and about the potential advantages of providing different educational opportunities for individuals led to greater freedom in curriculum design. The advantages of moving occupational therapy programmes into higher education were eventually acknowledged, leading finally to the award of degrees to those qualifying as occupational therapists.

This article tracks some of the educational developments from 1930, exploring key stances taken on curriculum design and models of programme delivery. The move away from, and back to, workplace learning is described. Future trends in Master's level education, distance learning and service learning are addressed briefly.

Problem-Based Learning within Occupational Therapy Education: A Summary of the Salford Experience

The Directorate of Occupational Therapy at Salford University adopted a modified problem-based learning (PBL) approach in March 2004. In recent years, PBL has received mixed reviews as a teaching method within occupational therapy education. As some directorates of occupational therapy consider the introduction of a PBL approach within their curriculum, others are turning away. The authors of this opinion piece have 2 years' experience in delivering a PBL curriculum and have developed an awareness of both the advantages and the pitfalls of this style of educational delivery.

Exploring Changes in Occupational Therapy Students' Approaches to Learning during Pre-Registration Education

This article describes a longitudinal cohort study, which examined the preferred approaches to learning of pre-registration occupational therapy students (N = 55) as they progressed through the 3 years of an undergraduate BSc(Hons) programme. The students' orientations to learning were measured using the short Approaches to Studying Inventory (ASI) (Entwistle 1981) and the results were compared descriptively across repeat measures undertaken during each year of study. Inferential statistics were used to examine whether there were any statistically significant differences in preferred learning approaches throughout the 3 years of study.

The results showed moderate changes in learning approaches, which were associated with more successful outcomes of learning. The evidence of the use of these deeper approaches to learning was accompanied by statistically significant decreases in the less desirable, superficial approaches, with reductions in the mean scores between year one and year three for Operation Learning (p < 0.005) and Learning Pathologies (p < 0.05).

The implications of the findings are discussed in relation to learning and teaching and assessment methods in undergraduate health professional education. Students may be encouraged to become more independent and to develop deeper approaches to learning by reducing formal contact time and developing assessment strategies that emphasise the exploration and application of knowledge.

Enhancing Occupational Therapy Students' Knowledge, Competence, Awareness, and Interest in Accessibility

OBJECTIVE/BACKGROUND

The purpose of this study was to assess whether the incorporation of an environmental assessment for accessibility, as part of an "Activity Analysis" course, would enhance new students' knowledge, competence, awareness, and interest in accessibility issues for people with disabilities.

METHODS

In this research, we included an out-of-class training of environmental assessment for accessibility. One hundred and two 1st-year occupational therapy students at Tel Aviv University participated in this research. Of the 102 participants, 56 experienced the training and 46 did not but attended the regular Activity Analysis course. The students explored a typical community environment, during which a specific checklist was used for assessing levels of accessibility. The "Accessibility-Knowledge Competence Awareness and Interests" questionnaire was administered before and after the course to both groups.

RESULTS

Students who participated in the out-of-class training showed significant increases in their knowledge, competence, and partial awareness of accessibility and also had better grades in two separate courses that required knowledge of accessibility. There was no significant difference in the results of the Accessibility-Knowledge Competence Awareness and Interests before and after the Activity Analysis course in the control group.

CONCLUSION

The findings of the current study support the contribution of teaching 1st-year occupational therapy students the principles and practices of accessibility for people with disabilities, by improving their knowledge and level of competence at this early stage of their professional lives. Further studies are needed, however, to determine the optimal course of implementation in order to enhance awareness and interest in the subject of accessibility.

Problem-Based Learning Students' Perceptions of Knowledge and Professional Identity: Occupational Therapists as ‘Knowers’

Purpose:

The future of occupational therapy is dependent on profession-specific knowledge to underpin its practice. This research explored occupational therapy students' perceptions of knowledge and their professional identity from one problem-based learning programme.

Procedure:

A qualitative methodology using in-depth interviews gathered data from 20 occupational therapy students in their final year of an undergraduate programme. The data were analysed thematically and in relation to theoretical constructs derived from the sociologists of education, Basil Bernstein and Karl Maton.

Findings:

The students viewed occupational therapists as ‘knowers’ rather than as ‘knowledgeable’ therapists. This distinction is embedded in a professional identity grounded in the dispositions of the occupational therapist and the philosophical constructs that support occupational therapy, but not in the specialist knowledge of occupation.

Conclusion:

The students' experiences suggest that the problem-based learning programme provides the transferable skills and philosophical constructs that allow them to practise in a diverse range of contemporary occupational therapy settings. However, simply mirroring current practice restricts professional advancement. The identity of the occupational therapist needs to embrace both a philosophical discourse and the specialist knowledge of occupation.

Appreciative Inquiry in Occupational Therapy Education

Introduction:

The background to this study is the growing literature on the potential of applying appreciative inquiry (AI), commonly associated with business, to health care. As AI encourages creative thinking and is based on considering what can be done as opposed to what cannot, it seems suitable for educating occupational therapy students. To date, just one school of occupational therapy in the United Kingdom is known to have incorporated AI into its problem-based learning programme, whereby students are encouraged to think positively and creatively about clients and themselves. This study aimed to evaluate this pedagogic innovation with a focus on usefulness in practice placements.

Method:

Participants comprised students (n = 25) and relevant teaching staff (n = 6). Data collection was by semi-structured interviews withstaff, and focus groups with students. Qualitative thematic content analysis was undertaken inductively.

Findings:

The findings suggested that students found AI an enjoyable and interesting learning method, and staff enjoyed teaching using this paradigm. Moreover, AI encouraged students to think more positively about clients on practice placement, especially in mental health settings.

Conclusion:

The implications for practice are an ability to think more creatively in therapeutic interventions, and to provide therapists with another tool that they could use when working with clients.

An evaluation of a problem-based learning experience in an occupational therapy curriculum in the UK

The objectives of the study was to evaluate an adapted approach to problem-based learning (PBL) on a pre-registration Masters course in Occupational Therapy at the University of East Anglia in the UK. The adaptation, named placement PBL, required students to write and select the material based on their placement experiences, for the cohort's learning. The evaluation purpose was to determine the students' views of the efficacy of placement PBL for facilitating their learning in the final 3 months of their pre-registration education. Placement PBL was evaluated using both questionnaires and focus groups, with two cohorts of students for data collection. Placement PBL was seen to provide current, relevant and complex learning scenarios that help students to move from a theoretical understanding to application of theory in the complexity of actual service situations. The authors conclude that placement PBL has the potential to prepare students for the transition from student to qualified practitioner. Both researchers were also the PBL tutors which may have affected the students' honesty in their feedback. Further research is indicated for ongoing evaluations of the effectiveness of PBL in helping students to become confident occupational therapy clinicians, and comparative studies with other learning approaches.

A study of critical reasoning in online learning: application of the Occupational Performance Process Model

This study examined the effect of an online guided independent study on critical reasoning skills. Twenty-one first-semester Master of Occupational Therapy students completed an online assignment designed to facilitate application of the Occupational Performance Process Model (Fearing & Clark) and kept reflective journals. Data from the journals were analyzed in relation to the three sets of questions, question type and results of the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA). This assignment appeared to be effective for enhancing awareness and use of critical reasoning skills. Differences in patterns of critical reasoning between students with high and low WGCTA scores and results of an inductive analysis of the journal entries are discussed. Future research investigating the types of feedback that effectively facilitate development of critical reasoning and whether students with high and low WGCTA scores might benefit from different types of instruction and/or feedback is recommended.

Challenging Knowledge Reproduction: Problem-Based Learning for Evidence-Based Practice

This opinion piece supports the use of problem-based learning (PBL) as a teaching and learning method that can be used to support evidence-based practice. The PBL process reflects that of evidence-based practice: by engaging in this process, the occupational therapy student can gain the skills, ability and confidence to use his or her personal and professional knowledge, existing or new, in challenging and changing practice environments.