Humanistic education in surgery: a "patient as teacher" program for surgical clerkship.

Summary: Surgeons are frequently perceived by medical students to be uncompassionate, resolute and individualistic. Surgical education often prioritizes teaching and learning approaches that perpetuate these perceptions. In other specialties, engaging patients in education has shown promise in refocusing attention from the technical and procedural aspects of care toward the humanistic and social aspects. Despite proven favourable outcomes for both patients and students in many clinical areas, a "patient as teacher" approach to surgical education has yet to be adopted widely in Canada. A patient as teacher program was developed for surgical clerks at the University of Toronto with the goal of emphasizing the humanity of the patient, the psychosocial impact of a surgical diagnosis of breast cancer on patients and their families, and the social and humanistic roles for surgeons in providing patient-centred care. We report on the program's development process and pilot session.

Collaborative Care Transitions Symposium: Insights from Participants.

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: There are promising signs that interprofessional collaborative practice is associated with quality care transitions and improved access to patient-centred healthcare. A one-day symposium was held to increase awareness and capacity to deliver quality collaborative care transitions to interprofessional health disciplines and service users. METHOD: A mixed methods study was used that included a pre-post survey design and interviews to examine the impact of the symposium on knowledge, attitudes and practice change towards care transitions and collaborative practice with symposium participants. DISCUSSION: Our survey results revealed a statistically significant increase in only a few of the scores towards care transitions and collaborative practice among post-survey respondents. Three key themes emerged from the qualitative analysis, including: (1) engaging the patient at the heart of interprofessional collaboration and co-design of care transitions; (2) having time to reach out, share and learn from each other; and (3) reflecting, reinforcing and revising practice. CONCLUSION: Further efforts that engage inter-organizational learning by exchanging knowledge and evaluating these forums are warranted.