Longitudinal Faculty Development in Curriculum Design: Our Experience in the Integrated Care Training Program

Building a health systems science bridge between medical school and the clinical learning environment via a pilot faculty development cohort program

BACKGROUND

Clinical faculty development focused on Health Systems Science (HSS) is crucial for integrating HSS concepts into medical education. The 2021 HSSIP Faculty Development program was created to support faculty in effectively creating and incorporating comprehensive HSS content into the clerkship experience.

METHODS

Nine clinical champions, selected for their diverse backgrounds and interest in HSS, participated from November 2021 through October 2022 in monthly day-long, in-person workshops, and bi-monthly self-directed sessions, covering both HSS domains and foundational learning in curriculum development. Using a community of practice model, clinical champions gained expertise in HSS domains and developed curricula throughout the year-long program. Evaluation methods included surveys and feedback, focusing on satisfaction, self-efficacy, and curricular content creation.

RESULTS

Post-engagement surveys showed increased comfort in teaching HSS content, with significant improvement in specific areas. Participants valued learning from experts and collaborating with peers but found virtual sessions challenging. Despite systemic challenges and time constraints, clinical champions successfully created and implemented HSS-focused curricular content. They also contributed to broader HSS education efforts, presenting scholarly work and integrating HSS into various educational activities.

CONCLUSIONS

This study showcases an innovative approach to preparing faculty to integrate HSS into clinical education. Key lessons included the value of subject matter experts, community engagement, and the challenges of virtual participation. Despite limitations such as low response numbers and context-specific results, the program demonstrated the potential for broad HSS integration. Further research with more participants and more rigorous data collection protocols is needed to more fully understand the generalizability of such an innovation. The initiative serves as a model for other academic health centers.

Twelve tips for using the Understanding by Design® curriculum planning framework

BACKGROUND

Health professions faculty engaged in curriculum planning or redesign can struggle with developing courses or programs that align desired learner outcomes, such as competencies to be applied in a clinical setting, with assessment and instruction.

AIMS

Our medical school implemented the Understanding by Design (UbD) framework to achieve alignment of outcomes, assessments and teaching during the renewal of our four-year curriculum. This article shares our strategies and practices for implementing UbD with teams of faculty curriculum developers.

DESCRIPTION

The UbD framework is a 'backward' approach to curriculum development that begins by identifying learner outcomes, followed by the development of assessments that demonstrate achievement of competencies and concludes with the design of active learning experiences. UbD emphasizes the development of deep understandings that learners can transfer to novel contexts.

CONCLUSIONS

We found UbD to be a flexible, adaptable approach that aligns program and course-level outcomes with learner-centred instruction and principles of competency-based medical education and assessment.

Interactive Course Design and Development for Cognitively Inspired Distance International Chinese Education

This paper conducts in-depth research and analysis on the design and development of interactive courses for distance international Chinese language education using the cognitive heuristic model. The A-frame framework and JavaScript (JS) language are used to complete the construction of the virtual supermarket environment and initially design the basic framework of task-based courseware for Chinese language teaching based on virtual reality technology. Experts were invited to conduct two rounds of prestudy on the index system and determine the evaluation indexes. The international students in the junior Chinese class of X University were randomly selected as the research subjects and divided into experimental and control groups for the experimental intervention teaching. The content and form of classroom teaching were the same for both groups, and they were asked to review and consolidate the grammar points learned in class after class. The only intervention was that the experimental group was required to conduct microlearning after class with the classroom grammar points, while the control group was not required to do the same form of review after class. In addition, the students in the experimental group were followed up as a case study, and their attitudes, behaviors, and knowledge proficiency in the microlearning were recorded in detail to assess the students' acceptance and satisfaction of the microlearning from the perspective of qualitative analysis. It was found that the microlessons for teaching and learning Chinese as a foreign language can stimulate learners' interest in learning, achieve good interactive effects, and contribute to the improvement of learners' performance. This paper combines virtual reality technology, fully explores the role that immersive VR technology can play in providing cultural scenarios in the target language, and maximizes the use of existing technological vehicles and resources for Chinese teaching application design, to solve the challenges of poor interactivity in online teaching and the lack of socio-cultural contexts that have long existed in overseas Chinese teaching.

Development and Implementation of an Integrated Care Fellowship

INTRODUCTION

Integrated care is a common approach to leverage scarce psychiatric resources to deliver mental health care in primary care settings. To date, a formal clinical fellowship devoted to professional development for this role has not been described.

METHODS

The development of a formal year-long clinical fellowship in integrated care is described. The curriculum consists of an Integrated Care Didactic Series, Integrated Care Clinical Skill Experiences, and Integrated Care System-Based Leadership Experiences. Evaluation of impact was assessed with descriptive statistics.

RESULTS

We successfully recruited three classes of fellows to the Integrated Care Fellowship, with 5 program graduates in the first 3 years. All five graduated fellows were hired into integrated care and/or telepsychiatry positions. Integrated Care fellows had a high participation rate in didactics (mean attendance = 80.6%; n=5). We received a total of 582 didactic evaluations for the 151 didactic sessions. On a scale of 1 (poor) to 6 (fantastic), the mean quality of the interactive learning experience was rated as 5.33 (n=581), and the mean quality of the talk was 5.35 (n=582). Rotations were rated with the mean overall teaching quality of 4.98/5 (n = 76 evaluations from 5 fellows).

CONCLUSIONS

The Integrated Care clinical fellowship serves as a model for training programs seeking to provide training in clinical and systems-based skills needed for practicing integrated care. Whether such training is undertaken as a standalone fellowship or incorporated into existing Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry programs, such skills are increasingly valuable as integrated care becomes commonplace in practice.

Development of research methods curriculum for an integrated care fellowship

OBJECTIVE

To describe the design and delivery of a curriculum in research methods for clinical fellows in integrated care.

METHOD

To design the curriculum, a standard curriculum development approach was applied through an iterative improvement process with input from researchers, clinical educators, and the first cohort of fellows. The curriculum has three central goals: (1) develop fellows' capacity to interpret the integrated care literature and apply findings in practice; (2) develop fellows' capacity for conducting quality improvement programs informed by knowledge of clinical research methods; and (3) enhance workforce capacity for practice-based research partnerships by increasing research understanding among clinical providers. A variety of educational strategies were employed to introduce each research method and apply these to the integrated care literature.

RESULTS

A description, rationale, and resources for each content domain is presented. The curriculum was delivered to two cohorts of fellows. Evaluation data supports the curriculum's relevance and quality.

CONCLUSIONS

A rigorous development process yielded a brief research curriculum targeting the needs of clinical fellows in integrated care. The curriculum is well-received by fellows and adaptable for other subspecialties. It may serve as a model for other clinical training programs seeking to enhance their fellows' fluency in research methods.