Vol 1 no.1 | August 2013
Meet our Faculty Scholar
Lyn Gum, who is based at the Rural Clinical School (FURCS) in Renmark is the Faculty of Health Sciences Scholar for 2013. Lyn until recently, worked as a Lecturer in Rural Interprofessional Education (IPE) in the School of Medicine. Currently she is busy writing up her PhD which is in the field of interprofessional education and practice. The University’s Faculty Scholar initiative aims to encourage development and innovation in learning and teaching across the University. The Scholar is encouraged to take a leadership role over their one year appointment, contributing to the enhancement of learning and teaching as well as the quality of the student experience. Lyn’s goal has been to build on last year’s Faculty Scholar Iris Lindemann’s work in IPE. This has led to the development of a Faculty Development Program called TIPS – Teaching for Interprofessional Practice and Skills. The educational sessions are designed to assist educators, both academic and clinical, to become more knowledgeable about IPE and to be able to integrate it into their teaching. Although Lyn acknowledges that she is not an expert
in IPE she has immersed herself in the IPE philosophy since 2009, when IPE became a part of her role at FURCS.
Claire Verrall, Adrian Schoo and Brenton Kortman has assisted to cofacilitate the workshops.
Whilst IPE can be thought of as an extra load or layer of complexity to already full curricula, Lyn’s approach is that it should be a concept that is treated just like any other. For example, if students need to integrate their recently acquired knowledge and skills into the workplace, ‘work-integrated learning’ is included in their program. Therefore if we really want our students to have an understanding and appreciation of other health professional roles they need to be immersed into a session where they can learn with, from and about each other. This does not need to occur on a regular basis, but rather, be introduced at intervals throughout their program and each time at a level that allows for building a gradual understanding and application of how to be interprofessional. The overall aim is to have Flinders graduates who are collaboration ready.
Nearly all the workshops have been completed with each of the sessions attended by clinical educators from local health services along with academic staff. Having both health service staff and University staff at the workshops means that agreement can be reached on how to best meet the needs of our students. Each session has offered a variety of perspectives and discussion. The evaluations have been extremely positive to date and research data collected thus far indicates that TIPS is making a difference. For example, one research participant reflected on the mix of clinicians and academics attending together; “It gets people talking about it [IPE]. It makes me feel more confident to say ‘we need to teach it here’ because it is being practised outside.” (Series 2, Interview)
Lyn is undertaking a pilot research project alongside the TIPS educational sessions to investigate the effectiveness of the workshops and report ideas, achievements, challenges and lessons learnt from the workshop activities. She is particularly interested in looking at the relationship between professional academic identity and curriculum change, so the research project will monitor changes in educators’ perceptions or willingness to make changes to teaching and/or curriculum. Importantly the project will identify key lessons learnt and determine critical success factors for teachers and professional development. A team of skilled facilitators including Donald Bramwell, Linda Sweet, Iris Lindemann, Anna Vnuk, Sharon Lawn,
Lyn says “I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to be a Faculty Scholar as this helps me to build my career in the area of interprofessional education and practice, as well as assist educators to reflect on their current teaching methods and look at ways they can improve the quality of their teaching with the students’ best interests at heart”. Lyn is happy to speak to anyone who is interested in learning more about the Faculty Scholar initiative, IPE or who would like to attend TIPS in 2013. lyn.gum@flinders.edu.au
Education in Focus
From the Executive Dean
Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Faculty’s education-focussed newsletter. This new publication aims to showcase information and news about the Faculty’s education activities. We hope to include stories about education initiatives and innovations, introduce and profile Faculty staff, celebrate successes and share information about scholarships, conferences and funding opportunities. Two issues will be published this year with the aim of increasing to a quarterly publication in 2014. This new publication can only be successful if staff and students are willing to provide articles. You are encouraged to contact any of the editorial team listed on the last page if you would like to offer an article or suggest a story. I hope that you will enjoy reading about our Faculty’s education activities in this and future issues. Professor Michael Kidd AM Executive Dean Faculty of Health Sciences
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First year student initiatives in the School of Medicine The first year experience at university has been widely identified as a time of transition where students can experience both academic and social isolation. Success in the first undergraduate year is an indicator of overall success at university. Promoting engagement in university life is more than just the traditional orientation week and opportunities for students to experience success and feedback regarding their performance early in their studies should be embedded in the curriculum. Social activities or peer-mentoring programs that assist students to make connections with fellow students and methods to monitor and support students identified as being at-risk e.g. failing to engage with topic requirements or performing below the expectations for a topic should also be implemented. There are many transition initiatives already in place at Flinders and the attrition rates vary greatly across Schools and courses. However, the overall attrition rate for first year students at the University is approximately 1 in 5. To assist students’ transition to University, the School of Medicine (SOM) received funding for three years for a Director of First Year Studies (DFYS) position and a one-off $40,000 transition/ retention programs funding grant. Due to the diverse nature and location of the School’s undergraduate courses each course has nominated a First Year Coordinator (FYC) to work in collaboration with the DFYS, Ms Jane Bickford, who is responsible for the executive aspects of the role. This involves attending First Year Teaching and Transition Advisory Group (FYTTAG) meetings convened by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) and meeting regularly with the FYC group.
Since December 2012, the group has been busy developing transition activities at both School and Faculty level. These have included: First Year Educators’ workshop for Faculty of Health Sciences staff in February 2013; The development of First Year Matters - Essential guide for first year School of Medicine students and The piloting of a peer mentoring program in Disability, Speech Pathology and Medical Science. Targeted tutoring is also being trialled in Medical Science and Speech Pathology. The group looks forward to continuing their work to enrich the first year experiences of SOM students. jane.bickford@flinders.edu.au
Jane Bickford with students, Gabi Okoe & Rui Tan
Faculty of Health Sciences
School of Nursing & Midwifery orientation activities The main orientation activities run by the School of Nursing & Midwifery are the New to Nursing and Midwifery orientation conference, the Peer Mentoring program and the Welcome to Families evening.
The highlight of the (orientation conference) was meeting with the current students (mentors) for question time. They were inspirational and grounding. (Commencing student 2010)
Orientation conference The two day New to Nursing and Midwifery orientation conference took place in February. This is the fifth year that this highly successful conference has been run and it was attended by nearly all commencing students. Sessions are held in one lecture theatre and are videostreamed to another to accommodate the large number of attendees. This is the largest single discipline orientation activity offered at Flinders University.
Peer Mentoring The School’s peer mentoring program was established in 2009. Second and third year student mentors are connected to groups of students at the orientation conference and follow them through the first six to seven weeks of semester. The program provides new students with opportunities to talk to a fellow student about any issues that may be causing them anxiety such as essay writing, managing paid work and study, working out if nursing is for them; fears about clinical placement and where to seek advice in the School or University. Prospective mentors attend a training day in February, must commit to attending the orientation conference and formally report to the undergraduate Course Coordinator Ms Jan Thompson weekly over the next six to seven weeks about any issues they have in their mentoring role.
The Conference blends lecture style activities with break-out sessions managed by second and third year student mentors. These relatively small group sessions enable commencing students to feel more comfortable asking questions about their particular program or specific issues that might impact on their studies such as English proficiency, balancing full-time work and study, family commitments and limited preparation for higher education. Education literature suggests that making friends early at university supports student success so lunch is provided on Day 1 to encourage students to mingle with each other. Small group tours of the campus are conducted and several hours are set aside for small group mentoring sessions. Flinders student support services and the Student Association provide speakers, and representatives from peak professional and industrial bodies speak about their organisations and the benefits of membership for students. Finally, recent graduates speak about their experiences and several staff members share their career journeys. Feedback over the years about this event has been extremely positive.
Welcome to Families evening In keeping with the University and Faculty focus of increasing the engagement of ‘first in family’ students, the School held an Inaugural ‘first in family’ evening in March 2012. All students who were the first person in their family to undertake university study were invited to bring their family or partner to this event. Forty eight per cent of students in the pre-registration program (approximately 200 students), met this criteria and 162 people attended the evening. Following a short presentation about University and School expectations and results of the ALTC funded statebased ‘Student Expectations Survey’, participants toured classrooms and laboratories showcasing the range of equipment used in teaching and simulated patient scenarios. The evening concluded with students and
their families sharing food and chatting with staff and student mentors. Parents and partners commented that they did not know what lecture theatres, classrooms and practical laboratories on a university campus were like, but could now visualise where and what their son/daughter/ partner would be studying. The School hosted a similar event again this year but it was renamed Welcome to Families to remove any stigma associated with being ’first in family’. Two hundred and forty participants attended and again, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. New core ‘transition’ topic in the Bachelor of Nursing curriculum Another initiative was added to the School’s suite of orientation/transition activities this year. The recently accredited new Bachelor of Nursing curriculum includes a core 4.5 unit topic NURS1001 Introduction to the Nursing Profession and Independent Learning, run as a three week intensive early in the semester for all commencing students. The topic aims to transition students to the Discipline, School and University. All other topics for commencing students commence in Week 4 of the semester. Student evaluation of the topic was very positive but several issues have been raised. The intensive modality causes problems for some students with family commitments and paid work; there are also staffing issues given the intensive nature of the faceto-face teaching, tracking student engagement when a substantial number of on-line activities occur out of class time and supporting students who are clearly looking lost and are struggling to keep up. Further review of this topic will occur later this year in preparation for March 2014. jan.thompson@flinders.edu.au
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Education in Focus
New Bachelor of Nursing curriculum The first year of a completely new and innovative Bachelor of Nursing curriculum has been implemented in the School of Nursing & Midwifery in 2013. Drawing on strategies such as blended learning, flipped classrooms and casebased learning, this curriculum prepares students to practice as clinicians in contemporary and future health care environments across the diversity of venues where this care is delivered. This curriculum differs from the previous curriculum in a number of ways. It fully embraces blended learning, combining on-line learning with face-to-face classroom sessions. The on-line component invites students to complete interactive learning pods that allow them to explicitly explore ideas and concepts for later application in the face-to-face classes. For example, learning pods are provided in areas of Indigenous health, mental health, anatomy and physiology and law and ethics. The learning acquired through interaction with these learning pods is then applied in face-toface sessions in the classroom during which students are encouraged to think critically about, analyse, and discuss a variety of cases derived from real world practice. These
cases are stored and accessed by lecturers and students as part of an on-line case repository called CaseWorld. This new curriculum also integrates various levels of simulation into the learning experience making use of the School's new nursing laboratories and simulation suite. These facilities are world class and state-of-the-art and provide students with the opportunity to practice complex skills in a safe environment prior to implementation in their practice. In order to ensure the effectiveness of this new curriculum, a strategic plan of
research and evaluation is underway to obtain empirical evidence of the program's effectiveness. It will be further developed and refined during the three years of implementation. There are many other features that make this curriculum innovative and unique. The School’s staff are excited to be pushing forward into the future and ensuring that graduates of our nursing program are highly skilled to work in the rapidly changing health care environment now and into the future, providing the best care possible for the community. steve.parker@flinders.edu.au
Students working in the simulation suite
Education in Focus is an initiative of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Flinders University Comments and suggestions for future articles are welcome Also available online: www.flinders.edu.au/health-sciences/current/publications.cfm Editorial Team: Mrs Karen Siegmann, Dr Claire Drummond, Ms Kelly Meier, Dr Barbara Sanderson, Dr Wendy Abigail & Dr Yvonne Parry Contact: karen.siegmann@flinders.edu.au
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