Abstract
This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Background: Developing patient-centred skills in health professional students relies on their learning experiences at the university and on clinical placements. It is not known what students perceive about their teaching on patient-centredness and their views to develop the curriculum in this aspect. Methods: Multiple focus groups were conducted with students who had experienced a minimum of two clinical placements from Medicine, Physiotherapy, Nursing and Speech and language therapy programs. Thematic analysis was conducted independently by two researchers and then themes were compared and integrated. Findings: Five focus groups with 26 participants with a mean age of 23.8 years contributed to 286 minutes of recorded data. The key findings were that their curriculum focussing on patient-centred skills used artificial methods and teaching focussed largely on biomedical aspects, but, shared modules and specialist training enabled learning. Longer and diverse placements with good role models to emulate, enabled learning. As strategies they suggested reflections and role-modelling were vital along with further interprofessional working, goal-setting and understanding of human psychology. Conclusion: Though the study is limited by its generalisability, strategies suggested by students can be further developed by superimposing them on learning theories. These strategies need to be tested in future studies.
Highlights
Patient-centred care (PCC) is an individualised and relationship-centred, holistic approach that aims to empower patients (Mead and Bower, 2000; Michie, Miles and Weinman, 2003)
This study aims to explore perceptions of students from four healthcare professions (Medicine, Nursing, Physiotherapy and Speech and Language Therapy) who form the majority of the healthcare workforce (NHS England, 2015), to understand their learning and teaching opportunities they had experienced and their recommendations regarding strategies to learn patient-centred care
The following undergraduate disciplines were approached to be in the study: medicine (MBChB), physiotherapy, nursing, and speech and language therapy (SALT)
Summary
Patient-centred care (PCC) is an individualised and relationship-centred, holistic approach that aims to empower patients (Mead and Bower, 2000; Michie, Miles and Weinman, 2003). It has been found that clinicians in the NHS adopt a task based approach instead of a patient-centred approach despite its benefits of positive patient-satisfaction and health outcomes (Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation, 2017). In this climate, development of patient-centredness in health-professional students in different disciplines such as Medicine, Nursing and therapies could be supported through education and training. Developing patient-centred skills in health professional students relies on their learning experiences at the university and on clinical placements.
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