It's very difficult to set the boundaries, it's human nature to want to respond: exploring health professions educators' responses to student mental health difficulties through a positioning theory lens

By virtue of their teaching role and contact with students, health professions (HP) educators are often the first point of connection for students who are experiencing mental health difficulties. Educators are increasingly expected to include some form of pastoral care in their role. Mental health-related interactions with students may have a negative emotional impact on educators, particularly when roles and expectations are not clearly defined and where boundaries are not managed effectively. Using positioning theory as a lens, this study explored how educators experienced such interactions and how this manifested in positions, storylines, and speech acts. Interviews were conducted with 27 HP educators at a faculty of medicine and health sciences. Reflexive thematic analysis using inductive coding identified themes corresponding to the nearing, weighted, ambivalent, and distancing positions participants adopted in relation to students with mental health difficulties. There was fluidity in and between positions, and more than one position could be occupied simultaneously; participants each moved through different positions in response to different relational situations. Multiple storylines informed these positions, representing how moral- and care-informed responsibility intersected with responsiveness to make certain actions possible or impossible. Normative and personal value narratives were evident in storylines, in many cases underscored by care or justice ethics. The value of positioning theory in facilitating reflective faculty development initiatives for educators engaged in these interactions is discussed.

Wikipedia in Health Professional Schools: from an Opponent to an Ally

As an online encyclopedia, Wikipedia is the world's largest reference Web site, with 1.7 billion visits per month. Given how easy it is to access and read, students use Wikipedia globally, despite most faculty members' admonitions. Since 2013, health professional schools worldwide have incorporated Wiki-editing into their formal curricula. These courses impact students by (1) strengthening their ability to evaluate evidence-based content and (2) multiplying their contributions to society through improvements to Wikipedia articles accessed by millions. We showcase several models of incorporating Wikipedia-editing assignments into health professions education worldwide. These successful initiatives can be replicated everywhere.

Health Professions' Educators' Adaptation to Rapidly Changing Circumstances: The Ottawa 2020 Conference Experience

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Most health professions' educators (HPEs) are used to responding to change, whether these are longer term organisational changes or short term crises, e.g. staff or student sickness or technical systems' failures. Most of these changes, whilst they can be frustrating, typically have fairly straightforward and routine solutions. Other wider, environmental changes are also starting to affect educators, learners and the complex education and healthcare systems in which they operate, and these will have great impact in the relatively near future. However, it is the current crisis stemming from the global transmission of the coronavirus COVID-19 which has most recently impacted on HPE on a global scale. Whilst many of us are very used to working virtually and using social media and other activities to work collaboratively, we still tend to rely on regular meetings with friends and colleagues (old and new) around the world at conferences and meetings. Similarly, most universities rely primarily on face to face teaching to provide their programmes, particularly in the early years. The COVID-19 pandemic has put all that into sharp relief, and many of us are having to make quick and sometimes reactive adaptations to our best-laid plans. In this article, we discuss some of our experiences from the recent Ottawa 2020 conference held in Kuala Lumpur from 1-5 March 2020, identifying some of the lessons learned that educators around the world will need to keep in mind as we move into what is currently unchartered territory. The learning lessons from our experience are that safety is paramount, communication and transparency is key; flexibility is needed from all stakeholders; technologies can help, but be realistic; acknowledge the need for psychological adaptation to change and crisis and tap into the wisdom and collegiality of the community. This paper specifically refers to Covid-19 but the learning lessons are applicable to other major challenges and the ideas described transferable to other situations.

The Health Professions Education Pathway: Preparing Students, Residents, and Fellows to Become Future Educators

PROBLEM

Training the next generation of health professionals requires leaders, innovators, and scholars in education. Although many medical schools and residencies offer education electives or tracks focused on developing teaching skills, these programs often omit educational innovation, scholarship, and leadership and are narrowly targeted to one level of learner.

INTERVENTION

The University of California San Francisco created the Health Professions Education Pathway for medical students, residents, and fellows as well as learners from other health professional schools. The Pathway applies the theoretical framework of communities of practice in its curricular design to promote learner identity formation as future health professions educators. It employs the strategies of engagement, imagination, and alignment for identity formation.

CONTEXT

Through course requirements, learners engage and work with members of the educator community of practice to develop the knowledge and skills required to participate in the community. Pathway instructors are faculty members who model a breadth of educator careers to help learners imagine personal trajectories. Last, learners complete mentored education projects, adopting scholarly methods and ethics to align with the broader educator community of practice.

OUTCOME

From 2009 to 2014, 117 learners participated in the Pathway. Program evaluations, graduate surveys, and web-based searches revealed positive impacts on learner career development. Learners gained knowledge and skills for continued engagement with the educator community of practice, confirmed their career aspirations (imagination), joined an educator-in-training community (engagement/imagination), and disseminated via scholarly meetings and peer-reviewed publications (alignment).

LESSONS LEARNED

Learners identified engagement with the learner community as the most powerful aspect of the Pathway; it provided peer support for imagining and navigating the development of their dual identities in the clinician and educator communities of practice. Also important for learner success was alignment of their projects with the goals of the local educator community of practice. Our community of practice approach to educator career development has shown promising early outcomes by nurturing learners' passion for teaching; expanding their interest in educational leadership, innovation, and scholarship; and focusing on their identity formation as future educators.