Marilyn Baird
The management of the clinical studies’ attachments that are an integral component of any pre-registration health professional course have always been challenging for educators. Essentially this is because in practice, knowledge, skills and attitudes are intertwined in increasingly complex ways. Thus over time a practice becomes translated into a personalised set of “illness scripts”. As a result busy practitioners find it difficult to unpick these scripts and teach students. Instead students are repeatedly left to work it out by themselves and are comforted with the phrase “it comes with experience”. However, whilst this pearl of wisdom has about it a ring of truth, it doesn’t help the student struggling to put it all together in real time. How for instance, does a student know when they have gained sufficient experience? When can the beginning practitioner be sure their performance is satisfactory?
From an educative perspective, clinical studies must enable and empower students to become reflective and professional practitioners who use science to inform their clinical decisions making. In contrast, from the perspective of the practitioner, the arrival of students into their world is often a cause for concern or relief insofar as students can either represent another pair of hands to assist in getting through the case load or an impediment to getting the job done. Thus without appropriate learning and assessment strategies that explore clinical reasoning abilities and practical competency in all its dimensions, clinical experience for students is partial and learning compromised.
Since its creation in 1998, the Department of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences (MIRS) has utilized a number of learning strategies and tools in an effort to transform the clinical studies’ components of all of its course from the traditional “manpower” model of human resource training to a reflective practicum which acknowledges that the development of clinical competency takes time, effective and objective feedback and meaningful practice and assessment. Primarily amongst these strategies and tools has been the successful adoption of the Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1985) model of skill development to the assessment of clinical performance and development professional competency.
This interactive workshop has several aims. Firstly, it will introduce participants to the principles of the Novice to Expert model of skill development and through reference to their use within the clinical studies components of the radiography, radiation therapy, nuclear medicine and medical ultrasound courses offered by MIRS, illustrate why more use should be made of this assessment model. Secondly, small groups will work on applying the model within their own programs. The session will conclude with a plenary session in which participants through the use of cases will discuss the merits or otherwise of the application of the model within their particular program.
Pre-reading
Carraccio, CL., Benson, BJ., Nixon, J., & Derstine, PL. From the educational bench to the clinical bedside: translating the Dreyfus Developmental Model to the Learning of Clinical Skills. Academic Medicine 2008; 83 (8) 71-767
Pre-workshop Preparation
Participants are invited to come along to the workshop with worked examples of assessment problems and challenges amenable to solution through the application of the Dreyfus and Dreyfus model.
