Patients’ Messages as Educators in an Interprofessional Health Education Program

Authors

  • Shelley Doucet University of New Brunswick, Department of Nursing and Health Sciences Dalhousie University, Faculty of Medicine
  • Heidi Lauckner Dalhousie University
  • Sandy Wells University of British Columbia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22230/jripe.2013v3n1a98

Keywords:

Patient educators, Interprofessional education, Health professional education, Messages, Health Mentors Program

Abstract

Background: Patients have traditionally played a passive role in health professional education. Health Mentors Programs are new, innovative interprofessional education initiatives that involve "health mentors" (volunteer community patient educators), who share their experiences navigating the healthcare system with an interprofessional team of four health professional students. The purpose of this research was to explore what motivated the patient educators to participate in the Dalhousie Health Mentors Program and what messages they wanted to instill in health professional students.

Methods: Data were collected through seven semi-structured focus groups (N = 29) and one individual interview (N = 1), which were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Qualitative inductive thematic analysis was used to identify key themes.

Findings: Our study demonstrated that patients want to play an active role in educating health professional students with the hope of improving the healthcare system. The mentors wanted to convey to the students the importance of interprofessional collaboration, understanding patients are people first, listening to patients, and understanding the visible and invisible impacts of living with chronic conditions.

Conclusions: If we expect our students to become competent in providing interprofessional, patient-centred care, it is important that we provide opportunities for patients to be actively involved in health professional education, as they have important messages that cannot be taught from a textbook.

Author Biographies

Shelley Doucet, University of New Brunswick, Department of Nursing and Health Sciences Dalhousie University, Faculty of Medicine

Shelley is currently an Instructor in the Department of Nursing & Health Sciences at the University of New Brunswick and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University. Shelley`s experiences teaching interprofessional student teams in classroom and clinical settings, as well as her ongoing clinical experiences in mental health nursing, have led her to establish interprofessional health education initiatives and to explore their outcomes.

Heidi Lauckner, Dalhousie University

Assistant Professor, School of Occupational Therapy, Dalhousie University, 5869 University Avenue, Forrest Building Room 215, PO BOX 15000              Halifax, NS  B3H 4R2 Canada

Sandy Wells, University of British Columbia

PhD student

School of Kinesiology,University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

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Published

2013-03-27

Issue

Section

Articles: Empirical Research