Student Engagement in the development of a common core curriculum for health professions

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Student Engagement in the development of a common
core curriculum for health professions

• Vivien Moffat, Universities Scotland
• Donna Burns, Queen Margaret University

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(No Transcript)
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ScCore Project

• 2 year project funded by Scottish Funding
  Council, supported by Universities Scotland and
  NHS Education for Scotland.
• Scoping common core curriculum for allied health
  professions and nursing.
• Drivers for Change
• Learning to Care (2008) Demand for flexibility
  in education in order to meet changing workforce
  need e.g. changes in professional roles.
• Better Health Better Care (2007) Emphasis on
  population health and community-based
  anticipatory care and reducing health
  inequalities.

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Educational/ Workforce Challenges

• the time it takes to train health professionals.
• educational delivery in remote and rural areas.
• preparation for new roles.
• employment expectations/ aspirations of
  graduates.
• new regulatory requirements/ frameworks.
• need to develop/strengthen partnerships between.
  education and health service providers.
• identifying most effective way to support
  learning and share best practice.

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ScCore Project aim

• To scope and pilot the reform of the Scottish
  four year undergraduate honours degree for a
  range of nursing and allied health professional
  programmes within the framework of a common
  learning strategy in response to the need for a
  flexible, effective and employable workforce

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Project overview
Curriculum issues Placements Assessments Delivery
methods Curriculum models Regulatory
requirements Staff/ Faculty development Organisati
onal issues Commercial modelling
Structural/Contextual issues Global student
recruitment Demographic changes Secondary to
primary orientation. Increased need for
integration Reduced recruitment pool against
rising healthcare need Tradition of
unidisciplinarity
Steering Group
Reference Group
Working Groups
Institutions/Programmes
Practitioners
Regulators
Employers
Scottish Funding Council
Experts
Stakeholders
Workforce planners
Service users
Professional Bodies
Higher education Institutions
Government
Students
Colleges
Sector skills council
Faculty
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Emerging questions

• What are stakeholder perceptions of a curricular
  reform?
• What are common attributes/capabilities for all
  health professionals?
• What would benefits be of more integrated ways of
  preparing health professional staff?
• What are the limits to integration?

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Student Engagement
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Rationale

• Students are key stakeholders.
• Exploring recruitment and retention issues.
• Student voice in programme/knowledge development.
• Opportunity for student involvement- experience
  of research process and development of role as
  peer educator/champion for change.
• Encouraging ownership.
• Requires an open, exploratory, approach...

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Focus Groups

• Current, recent and prospective students.
• 4-8 participants/group.
• 1 hour discussion audio taped.
• Students as co-researchers and facilitators
  preparation, data collection and analysis.
• Representation on reference group.

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Recruitment

• HEIs academic staff, student reps, student
  ambassador groups
• Scotlands Colleges- teaching staff
• Working in health access network (WHAN) -schools
• Recent graduates HEI links
• Constraints ethics permissions, timing, student
  response, research overload

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Participants

• North
• Undergraduate student focus groups x 2.
• School (S4) focus groups x 2.
• West
• Undergraduate student focus group x 2.
• New practitioner focus group.
• South East
• Student focus groups x 2.
• College focus groups x 2.
• New practitioner focus group.

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Topic guide

• Why you the chose this programme/ career/ HEI.
• Structure - what did you expect from your
  programme and what have you found?
• Process - what kind of learning environment
  works for you?
• Outcome - what are the attitudes, actions and
  behaviours that should be developed in order to
  prepare students for practice as health
  professionals?
• Perceptions of common core curriculum.

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Analysis

• Interviews recorded and transcribed.
• Transcripts read and re-read by more than one
  reviewer.
• Grounded theory approach emerging themes
  compared and contrasted.
• Analysis facilitated by NVivo 8.
• Discussion amongst research group of emerging
  themes

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Early emerging themes

• Working and learning together.
• Developing professional identity.
• Getting on with the job v. perceptions of
  graduateness.
• Buy-in from academic and practice staff.

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Working and learning together
we will be working in multi-disciplinary teams so
we have to learn to get on with one another and I
think the earlier that starts the better
every profession has got the same goal which is
kind of improving peoples quality of life and
improving peoples health, were all kind of
singing off the same hymn sheet in the end
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Professional identity
its something which is crucial when youre
working, to have your identity, to know your role
or how you fit in with the rest of the team. I
think, certainly the start of second year, I
started to get my professional identity, end of
first year, just after placement

• ...me whos very definite about wanting to do
  nursing, having to wait 2 years to actually get
  into it, would that make you want to just drop
  out if you couldnt stick, you know, just doing 2
  years general?

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Learning together
Maybe if you had modules every year, that
everybody did

• Rather than just one year blocked off for doing
  that because I think its important that we
  really continue learning about our own specific
  profession because thats

.what were here for
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Getting on with the job
when I realised that OT could be for me, I wanted
to get qualified and I wanted to do the job, but
Im quite frustrated really having to be here for
4 years
I just dont think theres any difference thats
being made from getting an honours degree. I
dont see how youre getting better people
necessarily

• I just know these are hoops Ive got to jump
  through

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Graduateness
Evidence based practice is having the ability
to go out there and make sure that you are
implementing what is current in your profession,
having gone through an honours degree you will
have that ability
the whole concept of the dissertation is that
you ask a question and the asking of the question
is to make you think how you can advance practice
so I would imagine that it is a transferable
skill across all the professions

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Staff Buy-in
when I was on placement, they had time set off
and they had discussions and it was really,
really good .. everyone was involved and
appreciated everybody elses input and I was
really shocked that it actually worked so well,
but really impressed

• one of the negative things of IPE at the moment
  is the lecturers saying, oh well, we dont
  really want to be here but here we are again for
  another year that doesnt give us any faith.
  Why are we there learning when they dont want to
  be teaching us this?

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Key lessons/areas for exploration

• Students perceive benefits in working and
  learning together.
• Importance of professional identity.
• Extended period of generic preparation is a risk
  for recruitment and retention.
• Vocational model of preparation is strong.
• Development/promotion of Graduate attributes.
• Buy-in from stakeholders to facilitate change.

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Next steps

• On-going data collection and analysis.
• Informing debate.
• Feedback to participants.
• Informing development of options for curricular
  reform.
• Further Information
• vmoffat_at_qmu.ac.uk
• ScCore project website www.sccore.org.uk

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Acknowledgements

• We would like to thank
• Dr Stuart Cable Director of the ScCore Project
• Sharon Peel for transcribing
• Staff and student researchers
• Anne Lawrie, Dr Stella Howden, Heather Hunter,
• Karen Matthews, Charlotte Wright, Jamie Addis,
• Staff at HEIs, Colleges and Schools
• And most of all. focus group participants!