Energizing Occupation as the Center of Teaching and Learning.

The concept of occupation has experienced a renewal in the past 3 decades and is widely accepted as the core subject in occupational therapy. Professional education has a critical stewardship role in continually enhancing how occupation is taught and understood to enrich new occupational therapy practitioners' ability to grasp the purpose of the profession and reason clinically in complex practice environments. The authors discuss three questions that frame approaches educators can use to effectively centralize occupation in teaching and learning environments: (1) To what degree is a curriculum and its courses and class sessions subject centered? (2) To what degree do instructional processes create links to occupation? and (3) To what degree do instructional processes expose and promote complex ways of knowing needed for learning occupation? Keeping occupation in the foreground is important to facilitate new research, teaching methods, and curricular relevance to practice.

Attaining interprofessional competencies through a student interprofessional fellowship program.

For students interested in enriching their interprofessional competencies beyond those required and offered by their academic programs, an elective interprofessional education fellowship can serve that need. We designed a fellowship for students linking a conceptual framework grounded in adult learning principles. During the fellowship, students progress through three levels of learning as they acquire, apply, and demonstrate interprofessional collaborative knowledge and skills; fellowship activities are self-directed. A content analysis of students' fellowship summary reports sought to determine the effectiveness of the fellowship as a learning experience to acquire interprofessional collaborative competences. Results indicated that students most consistently report competencies associated with acquisition of values and ethics for interprofessional practice, roles/responsibilities, and teams/teamwork; interprofessional communication was implied. All students expressed commitment to interprofessional collaborative behavior when in practice. Based on the results from this study, this fellowship structure may serve as a model for other institutions to adapt and implement for best practice and best fit.

Education as engine.

The pull of education is a powerful engine for societal change. Education is a values-driven product with specific and objective aims that serve society. The values of professional occupational therapy education were laid down at the field's inception, although they have changed with the passage of time and in response to the profession's and society's occupational needs. Learning is different from education and is an individual process that requires facilitators with well-honed pedagogies if it is to fuel the engine pulling the profession forward. Keeping occupation as the central core of the profession serves as a necessary filter that allows more diligent thinking and linking between occupation and other relevant topics. Living life to its fullest-our own lives and the lives of our service recipients-demonstrates progress in the idiosyncratic arrangement of habits and routines that are personally meaningful, socially satisfying, and culturally relevant.

Value and challenges of research on health professions' core subjects in education.

Professions are organized around central concerns, or core subjects. Knowledge of a field's core subject is indispensable to effective practice, reasoning, and professional identity. In health professions education, however, core subjects are often obscured by the plethora of topics and skills that must be taught, rendering them largely implicit in the learning process. Core subjects and how they are addressed in curricula thus remain under-researched in health professions education. The scarcity of research can be attributed to the need for (1) explicating core subjects as the basis for learning, (2) language that describes professional education as connecting all learning to a field's core, and (3) research methods that go beyond early phases of research development, including a conceptual framework for understanding and studying core subjects. This paper presents strategies addressing each of these challenges that were developed through a pilot and a subsequent large national study of occupational therapy education. These strategies provide a foundation for dialogue and future research on the nature and function of core subjects in health professions education.

The Caring Professionals Program: educational approaches that integrate caring attitudes and empathic behaviors into health professions education.

Caring attitudes and empathic behaviors are considered by most Americans to be an essential and intrinsic element of appropriate health care, yet little attention is given to this in the curricula of most healthcare professional training programs. This paper describes an ongoing educational intervention to develop healthcare professionals with caring attitudes and empathic behaviors that will be sustained in their professional practice environments. The Caring Professionals Program was designed to enhance and redesign existing learning experiences in four academic programs: physical therapy, occupational therapy, physician assistant, and nurse practitioner. Students entering in the summer of 2009 were engaged in the initial program and study. Six educational elements were employed in the Caring Professionals Program: experience, reflection, problem-solving, didactic, active participation, and role modeling. Educational interventions were designed to be appropriate to the students' temporal progress through their programs, specifically the early, middle or late stages. The Caring Professionals Program may serve as a model for other allied health schools and also contribute to a college culture that supports caring and humanism.

Changing the future of health professions: embedding interprofessional education within an academic health center.

Institutions are increasingly considering interprofessional education (IPE) as a means to improve health care and reduce medical errors in the United States. Effective implementation of IPE within health professions education requires a strategic institutional approach to ensure longevity and sustainability. In 2007, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) established Creating Collaborative Care (C), an IPE initiative that takes a multifaceted approach to weaving interprofessional collaborative experiences throughout MUSC's culture to prepare students to participate in interprofessional, collaborative health care and research settings.In this article, the authors describe C's guiding conceptual foundation and student learning goals. They present its implementation framework to illustrate how C is embedded within the institutional culture. It is housed in the provost's office, and an overarching implementation committee functions as a central coordinating group. Faculty members develop and implement C activities across professions by contributing to four collaborating domains-curricular, extracurricular, faculty development, and health care simulation-each of which captures an IPE component. The authors provide examples of IPE activities developed by each domain to illustrate the breadth of IPE at MUSC. The authors believe that MUSC's efforts, including the conceptual foundation and implementation framework, can be generalized to other institutions intent on developing IPE within their organizational cultures.

Introducing students to patient safety through an online interprofessional course.

Interprofessional education (IPE) is increasingly called upon to improve health care systems and patient safety. Our institution is engaged in a campus-wide IPE initiative. As a component of this initiative, a required online interprofessional patient-safety-focused course for a large group (300) of first-year medical, dental, and nursing students was developed and implemented. We describe our efforts with developing the course, including the use of constructivist and adult learning theories and IPE competencies to structure students' learning in a meaningful fashion. The course was conducted online to address obstacles of academic calendars and provide flexibility for faculty participation. Students worked in small groups online with a faculty facilitator. Thematic modules were created with associated objectives, online learning materials, and assignments. Students posted completed assignments online and responded to group members' assignments for purposes of group discussion. Students worked in interprofessional groups on a project requiring them to complete a root cause analysis and develop recommendations based on a fictional sentinel event case. Through project work, students applied concepts learned in the course related to improving patient safety and demonstrated interprofessional collaboration skills. Projects were presented during a final in-class session. Student course evaluation results suggest that learning objectives and content goals were achieved. Faculty course evaluation results indicate that the course was perceived to be a worthwhile learning experience for students. We offer the following recommendations to others interested in developing an in-depth interprofessional learning experience for a large group of learners: 1) consider a hybrid format (inclusion of some face-to-face sessions), 2) address IPE and broader curricular needs, 3) create interactive opportunities for shared learning and working together, 4) provide support to faculty facilitators, and 5) recognize your learners' educational level. The course has expanded to include students from additional programs for the current academic year.

From scholarly teaching to the scholarship of teaching: a retrospective look at strategies that foster the transition of scholarly work in allied health into credible forms of scholarship.

With heavy teaching loads and service expectations, many allied health faculty members find themselves in situations that limit their ability to engage in traditional research and scholarship of sufficient magnitude to meet institutional standards for promotion and tenure. Strategies that link teaching or service activities to scholarly productivity increase the potential for allied health faculty to build credible forms of scholarship and find their niche in the academy. To explore the viability of the scholarship of teaching in allied health, we reflect on the experience of a small group of allied health faculty members when they chose to engage in the process of transforming the scholarly teaching embedded in the design, implementation, and evaluation of an allied health project grant (AGElink grant) into the scholarship of teaching. Through retrospective reflection, we aim to clarify the strategies that emerged in the process and propose ways in which faculty members may implement such strategies in their teaching to further their career development.

Managing post-therapy fatigue for cancer survivors using energy conservation training.

This pilot study evaluated the effectiveness of energy conservation training to help post-therapy cancer survivors manage their fatigue. Twelve post-therapy cancer survivors were randomly assigned to an energy conservation training or usual care control (6 in each group). Participants in the intervention group received 1 to 2 hours of individual, face-to-face energy conservation training from an occupational therapist followed by once-a-week telephone monitoring sessions in the subsequent three weeks. Participants in the control group received standard care from their oncologist. Analysis of pre- and post-training data from the Piper Fatigue Scale (PFS) revealed significant reduction only in the sensory subscale of the PFS (Z = 2.21; p = 0.027) for the intervention group; but no significant reduction in the four subscale or total scores of the PFS for the control group. Findings demonstrate partial support for the effectiveness of energy conservation training in helping post-therapy cancer survivors manage their fatigue. Energy conservation training seems to be a viable strategy for managing cancer-related fatigue, though its efficacy is modest. Incorporating specific energy restoration strategies such as relaxation and meditation for future research may help advance the growing body of knowledge in symptom management for post-therapy cancer survivors.

Compassionate clinicians: take patient care beyond the ordinary.

This study sought to identify specific actions, interventions, and interpersonal relationships with patients exhibited by a group of compassionate healthcare clinicians. Researchers interviewed 24 hospital clinicians who were identified by administrators as being exemplary in caring and compassion. Analysis of qualitative data indicated that the clinicians do not attempt to distance themselves, but develop warm, empathic relationships with patients. Participating clinicians did not appear to sacrifice objectivity in practicing compassionate care, but were able to integrate the mind and heart in their work. Based on the qualitative analyses, researchers developed a preliminary model of affective clinician/patient interactions.

Evaluating the effectiveness of occupational therapy faculty development workshops.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate, from the participants' perspective, the effectiveness over time of 10 occupational therapy faculty development workshops conducted between 1994 and 1998. METHOD: Surveys were mailed to 179 occupational therapy faculty participants to gather demographic data and perceptions of the following aspects of the workshops: benefits over time of the instructional content, changes made in current teaching practices, progress as a faculty member, and future needs for faculty development. RESULTS: The response rate was 63% (n = 106). The majority (72%) of respondents had less than 5 years of teaching experience. Respondents were women in their early 40s with approximately 12 years of clinical experience and a master's degree. Respondents perceived the most effective aspect of the faculty development workshops as the opportunity to participate in a face-to-face environment in which they observed the skills of a master teacher demonstrating instructional principles. Further, respondents reported that the greatest changes in their current teaching practices occurred in their ability to design, implement, and evaluate a course of instruction, thus increasing their perceptions of progress as a faculty member. CONCLUSION: The 10 faculty development workshops conducted between 1994 and 1998 were judged effective by occupational therapy faculty members who perceived that their participation resulted in benefits over time to their current teaching practices.