German translation and validation of the Interprofessional Facilitation Scale.

We identified evidence from item response theory (IRT) to examine a German translation of the Interprofessional Facilitation Scale (IPFS). The IPFS was administered to n = 130 mixed-health profession participants in a post-interprofessional education practicum questionnaire. We used IRT analyses to examine the following three aspects of the IPFS: (a) general factor strength, (b) subscale usability, and (c) item bias. First, findings indicate a strong, general factor underlying the IPFS that supports unidimensional interpretations. Second, findings supported IPFS overall reliability, but failed to support subscale reliabilities. Third, item bias assessment using a comparator-French sample (n = 89) indicated insubstantial differences across German and French samples. Taken together, we find sufficient evidence to support the IPFS-German translation's application in IPE contexts and unidimensional interpretations. Subscores are not advisable for interpretation, and future researchers should aim to further inspect potential item bias.

Large-scale, mobile and technology-enhanced serious game for interprofessional education: pilot study and lessons learnt.

Recent research suggests that serious gaming is a promising strategy for interprofessional education (IPE). This report describes the design and pilot testing of a large-scale, mobile, technology-enhanced serious game embedded in the IPE curriculum in Geneva, Switzerland. Organized into teams of eight, the students were tasked with finding a young patient who had just escaped from the intensive care unit. Through a series of 10 stations, they explored hospital- and community-based locations of the healthcare system and were engaged in various learning and game activities; they were rewarded with cues to unveil the mystery. A total of 582 undergraduate students from seven disciplines (medicine, midwifery, nursing, nutrition-dietetics, pharmacy, physiotherapy, and technology in medical radiology) took part. Survey results (response rate: 62.8%) suggest that an overall majority of students valued the game, particularly the collaborative experience of actively learning from others in autonomous teams. Qualitative feedback allowed us to identify future areas for improvement: simplifying the adventure storyline and optimizing student flow. Educational institutions across the world facing challenges when creating IPE activities will find in this report ideas and lessons learnt to use mobile technology and serious gaming for large cohorts of students.

Optimiser le co-enseignement patient/professionnel de santé.

INTRODUCTION: Patient engagement in the training of future health professionals is on the rise, given that the information patients transmit is immensely valuable to students. In addition, their involvement, alongside health professionals, in the formulation of academic materials should improve the quality of care in the long run. Little is written about good practice in involving patients in teaching, and even less about co-teaching, which is a demanding activity. We conducted a study with pairs of teachers who co-taught in health partnership workshops to develop best practice recommendations to optimize the roll-out of patient-healthcare professional co-teaching. PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH: This qualitative study aims to present these recommendations of good practices of co-teaching. RESULTS: The data collected made it possible to develop, evaluate, and adjust six good practices to guide the pairs during the co-teaching process: knowledge of the subject taught, regular meetings, teaching framework and materials, role definition, symmetry and complementarity in the pair, and a debriefing session following each teaching session. CONCLUSION: Patient involvement in co-teaching requires rigorous preparation. The application of good practice recommendations facilitates this preparation process.

The pedagogical value of near-peer feedback in online OSCEs.

PURPOSE OF THE ARTICLE: During the Covid-19 pandemic, formative OSCE were transformed into online OSCE, and senior students (near peers) substituted experienced clinical teachers. The aims of the study were to evaluate quality of the feedbacks given by near peers during online OSCEs and explore the experience of near-peer feedback from both learner's and near peer's perspectives. MATERIALS AND METHODS: All 2nd year medical students (n = 158) attended an online OSCE under the supervision of twelve senior medical students. Outcome measures were 1) students' perception of the quality of the feedback through an online survey (Likert 1-5); 2) objective assessment of the quality of the feedback focusing on both the process and the content using a feedback scale (Likert 1-5); 3) experience of near peer feedback in two different focus groups. RESULTS: One hundred six medical students answered the questionnaire and had their feedback session videotaped. The mean perceived overall quality of senior students' overall feedback was 4.75 SD 0.52. They especially valued self-evaluation (mean 4.80 SD 0.67), balanced feedback (mean 4.93 SD 0.29) and provision of simulated patient's feedback (mean 4.97 SD 0.17). The overall objective assessment of the feedback quality was 3.73 SD 0.38: highly scored skills were subjectivity (mean 3.95 SD 1.12) and taking into account student's self-evaluation (mean 3.71 (SD 0.87). Senior students mainly addressed history taking issues (mean items 3.53 SD 2.37) and communication skills (mean items 4.89 SD 2.43) during feedback. Participants reported that near peer feedback was less stressful and more tailored to learning needs- challenges for senior students included to remain objective and to provide negative feedback. CONCLUSION: Increased involvement of near peers in teaching activities is strongly supported for formative OSCE and should be implemented in parallel even if experience teachers are again involved in such teaching activities. However, it requires training not only on feedback skills but also on the specific content of the formative OSCE.

Interprofessional educators' competencies, assessment, and training - IPEcat: protocol of a global consensus study.

Contemporary practice in interprofessional education (IPE) has evolved predominantly focusing on the competencies for interprofessional collaboration (IPC) that learners must acquire. Competencies that educators need to successfully deliver IPC have been overlooked. This lack of attention is further confounded by a field replete with inconsistent terminology and standards and no global consensus on the core competencies needed for IPE facilitation. There are no globally accepted tools to assess interprofessional educators' competencies nor are there established training programmes that might be used as the basis for a collective global approach to these issues. The International Working Group for Interprofessional Educators Competencies, Assessment, and Training (IWG_IPEcat) seeks to address this gap using a sequential mixed-method approach, to deliver globally developed, empirically derived tools to foster IPE educator competencies. This article presents the protocol of the research project.

Patients partenaires : retour d'expérience sur l'enseignement du partenariat à Genève.

INTRODUCTION: Patient safety, quality and efficiency of care can be improved by strengthening interprofessional collaboration and patient engagement at all levels of the healthcare system. From the first year of the interprofessional collaboration training program for health students at the School of Health, the faculty of medicine and the section of pharmaceutical sciences in Geneva, patients are involved in partnership teaching. AIM OF THE STUDY: The study aims to assess two teaching activities, focusing on patient-caregiver in care, a conference, and workshops. These activities were co-constructed and co-facilitated by patient-teacher pairs. Based on their experiential knowledge, the patients' perspective was integrated into the teaching content. METHOD: A quantitative and qualitative assessment of the activities was conducted by questionnaire administered to students and semi-structured interviews with patients and teachers. RESULTS: Students, patients, and teachers evaluated the teaching activities as suitable, and the content was considered relevant. The implementation of partnership in patient-teacher pairs, especially co-facilitation, was a strong point of the activities. Most of the patients, who were teaching for the first time, nevertheless felt a significant apprehension concerning the animation of the activity.Conclusion : This first experience of teaching in partnership with patients gives cause for reflection on the involvement of patients in teaching and in particular in the co-construction of the content of training programs.

French translation and validation of the interprofessional facilitation scale for simulation.

This study aimed to translate the Interprofessional Facilitation Scale in French and validate its use for interprofessional simulation training. Experts translated the items into French and then back translated them into English. Data used for the validation were collected from interprofessional simulation trainings. Experts and observers found the scale's content validity was suitable. A principal component analysis was conducted. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test value was 0.88 and two factors were identified, that explained 59.9% of the variance. They were labeled: (a) Opportunity of Interprofessional Learning and (b) Psychological Safety. The Cronbach's alpha measure of internal consistency was 0.91. The learning simulation environment explained the structure of the scale. This study provides evidence that the French version of Interprofessional Facilitation Scale can be used in the context of interprofessional simulation training.

[Method and tools for the assessment of continuing education in health]. / Démarche d'évaluation des formations continues en santé : méthode et outils.

As part of their mandates, health training institutions are regularly called to offer training programs for health professionals. Evaluating the effectiveness of these training courses is an obvious necessity and it is necessary to measure the benefits for users in their care, for professionals in their practice and for institutions in their organization. In this article, we provide a description of the training evaluation method that we have developed. It provides a guide for structuring evaluations and tools for evaluating reactions, learning, change in practices, results and benefits for users.

Dans le cadre de leurs mandats, les institutions de formation en santé sont régulièrement sollicitées pour proposer des dispositifs de formation pour les professionnels de santé. L'évaluation de l'efficacité de ces formations est une nécessité évidente et il convient d'en mesurer les bénéfices pour les usagers dans leur prise en charge, pour les professionnels dans leur pratique et pour les institutions dans leur organisation. Nous proposons dans cet article une description de la méthode d'évaluation de formation que nous avons développée. Elle fournit un guide de structuration des évaluations et des outils permettant l'appréciation des réactions, des apprentissages, des changements de pratiques, des résultats et du bénéfice pour les usagers.

Providing equity of care for patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Western Switzerland: a descriptive intervention in a University Hospital.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this article is to describe an interventional project in a University Hospital. It explains the adjustments that were made to provide good care for patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities in an acute care setting in Western Switzerland. It is not the exposition of the results of a formalised research or study. Rather, this article relates the success story of a project initiated by a small group of passionate people on their free time, that eventually entered in the 2020 strategic planning of the largest hospital of Switzerland. Switzerland does not have a national policy regarding health needs for patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Health care professionals are not trained to identify and meet the specific health needs of this population and little is taught about intellectual and developmental disabilities during undergraduate studies. METHOD: The Disability Project was conducted between 2012 and 2017 in Geneva University Hospital, as follows: Firstly, over sixty working group sessions took place to identify the specific health needs of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, to identify the barriers to providing equity of care and to prioritize reasonable adjustments. The four following barriers emerged from these meetings: 1. Lack of awareness of healthcare professionals on specific health issues for patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities, which resulted in a poor healthcare coordination and reduced quality of care. 2. Communication and information transmission issues between hospital staff, families and supported residential accommodations. 3. Lack of training or insufficient training of healthcare professionals and hospital staff on intellectual and developmental disabilities. 4. Inaccessibility of the hospital facilities and buildings for patients with disabilities Secondly, arising from these priorities, interventions were developed. FINDINGS: The interventions were eventually applied throughout the hospital. Recommendations and reasonable adjustments were made to provide accessibility and equity of care for patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities. CONCLUSION: The Disability Project has achieved many reasonable adjustments in an acute care setting to provide good care and satisfaction for this population and their families.

Fear recognition impairment in early-stage Alzheimer's disease: when focusing on the eyes region improves performance.

A decline in the ability to identify fearful expression has been frequently reported in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). In patients with severe destruction of the bilateral amygdala, similar difficulties have been reduced by using an explicit visual exploration strategy focusing on gaze. The current study assessed the possibility of applying a similar strategy in AD patients to improve fear recognition. It also assessed the possibility of improving fear recognition when a visual exploration strategy induced AD patients to process the eyes region. Seventeen patients with mild AD and 34 healthy subjects (17 young adults and 17 older adults) performed a classical task of emotional identification of faces expressing happiness, anger, and fear in two conditions: The face appeared progressively from the eyes region to the periphery (eyes region condition) or it appeared as a whole (global condition). Specific impairment in identifying a fearful expression was shown in AD patients compared with older adult controls during the global condition. Fear expression recognition was significantly improved in AD patients during the eyes region condition, in which they performed similarly to older adult controls. Our results suggest that using a different strategy of face exploration, starting first with processing of the eyes region, may compensate for a fear recognition deficit in AD patients. Findings suggest that a part of this deficit could be related to visuo-perceptual impairments. Additionally, these findings suggest that the decline of fearful face recognition reported in both normal aging and in AD may result from impairment of non-amygdalar processing in both groups and impairment of amygdalar-dependent processing in AD.

Perceived eye region and the processing of fearful expressions in mild cognitive impairment patients.

BACKGROUND: The aim of the present study was to assess the possibility of compensating early facial expression recognition impairments in amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (a-MCI) patients. METHODS: Twelve patients with a-MCI and 17 healthy participants matched according to age and education participated in the study. The originality of the present study was to cue the recognition of facial expressions (happiness, anger, fear, and neutral) by comparing eye region expressions and entire facial expressions. RESULTS: A deficit in the recognition of fearful expressions was observed in a-MCI patients relative to the control group, whereas recognition of all the other emotional expressions was spared. Nevertheless, when eye expressions cued the recognition of fearful facial expressions, the performance of normal controls and a-MCI patients was comparable. CONCLUSION: The present paper indicates a selective impairment in fear recognition in the prodromal state of Alzheimer's disease, and the possibility of compensating this deficit by orienting selective attention on specific facial features.

Evaluating short-term and working memory in older adults: French normative data.

Short-term and working memory (WM) capacities are subject to change with ageing, both in normal older adults and in patients with degenerative or non-degenerative neurological disease. Few normative data are available for comparisons of short-term and WM capacities in the verbal, spatial and visual domains. To provide researchers and clinicians with a set of standardised tasks that assess short-term and WM using verbal and visuospatial materials, and to present normative data for that set of tasks. The present study compiled normative French data for three short-term memory tasks (verbal, visual and spatial simple span tasks) and two WM tasks (verbal and spatial complex span tasks) obtained from 445 healthy older adults aged between 55 and 85 years. Our data reveal main effects of age, education level and gender on older adults' short-term and WM performances. Equation-based normalisation can therefore be used to take these factors into account. The results provide a set of cut-off scores for five standardised tasks that can be used to determine the presence of short-term or WM impairment in older adults.

Health of undocumented migrants in primary care in Switzerland.

BACKGROUND: Undocumented migrants endure adverse living conditions while facing barriers to access healthcare. Evidence is lacking regarding their healthcare needs, notably in regards to chronic diseases. Our goal was to investigate health conditions in undocumented migrants attended in primary care setting. METHODS: This study was conducted at the primary care outpatient clinic, Geneva University Hospitals, Switzerland. We retrospectively recorded and coded all medical conditions of a random sample of 731 undocumented migrants using the International Classification of Primary Care, 2nd version (ICPC-2). We dichotomized conditions as chronic or non-chronic and considered multimorbidity in the presence of three or more chronic conditions. RESULTS: Participants originated from 72 countries and were mainly female (65.5%) with a mean age of 42.4 (standard deviation [SD]: 11.4) years. They presented a mean of 2.9 (SD: 2.1; range: 1-17) health conditions. In multivariable analysis, the number of conditions was associated with female gender (p = 0.011) and older age (p <0.001), but not with origin (p = 0.373). The body systems most frequently affected were endocrine, metabolic and nutritional (n = 386; 18.4%), musculoskeletal (n = 308, 14.7%) and digestive (n = 266, 12.8%). Hypertension (17.9%; 95% CI: 15.2%, 29.9%), obesity or overweight (16%; 95% CI: 13.4%, 18.9%) and gastric problems (14.1%; 95% CI: 11.6%, 16.8%) were most prevalent. Overall, 71.8% (95% CI: 68.5%, 75%) participants had at least one chronic condition while 20% (95% CI: 17.2%, 23.1%) had three or more. In multivariable analysis, age (p <0.001) was the only predictor of presenting at least one or three or more chronic conditions. CONCLUSIONS: Undocumented migrants present multiple health problems in primary care settings and bear an important burden of chronic diseases. The extent of multimorbidity highlights the need to provide and facilitate the access to comprehensive and long-term primary healthcare services.

Auditory local bias and reduced global interference in autism.

Processing local elements of hierarchical patterns at a superior level and independently from an intact global influence is a well-established characteristic of autistic visual perception. However, whether this confirmed finding has an equivalent in the auditory modality is still unknown. To fill this gap, 18 autistics and 18 typical participants completed a melodic decision task where global and local level information can be congruent or incongruent. While focusing either on the global (melody) or local level (group of notes) of hierarchical auditory stimuli, participants have to decide whether the focused level is rising or falling. Autistics showed intact global processing, a superior performance when processing local elements and a reduced global-to-local interference compared to typical participants. These results are the first to demonstrate that autistic processing of auditory hierarchical stimuli closely parallels processing of visual hierarchical stimuli. When analyzing complex auditory information, autistic participants present a local bias and a more autonomous local processing, but not to the detriment of global processing.