MSHS attendance at the ANZAHPE Conference 2024

This years theme was “Cultivating Innovation”, where conference delegates from across the globe were provided the opportunity to learn about and share the latest research and practices in health professional education. Welcoming over 740 delegates from around the globe, this was ANZAHPE’s biggest conference yet.

Congratulations to the following MSHS staff members on their presentations:

Patrick Bowers - Audiology

Title: The Role of Anonymous Patient Feedback in Shaping Audiology Students' Soft Skills

Summary: Audiology students are trained to develop both technical and soft skills, including patient-centered care. With growing student cohort and limited educator time to provide comprehensive feedback, Patrick’s study aims to assess the value of patient feedback, with a focus on aligning student and patient judgement of soft skills and understand how students may use this feedback. 31 patients and 13 audiology students were surveyed on the professionalism, compassion and communication skills of students in practice, with semi-structures interviews with students providing perspectives on anonymous patient feedback. It was found that patients consistently rated students higher across all soft skills. The study demonstrated that students held anonymous patient feedback very highly, improving student confidence and prompting them to approach their patient interactions more seriously and further emphasising the importance of soft skills for patient-centered care. Further investigations are needed to assess the feasibility of implementing large-scale patient feedback programs into clinical training settings.

Dr Elaina Kefalianos – Speech Pathology

Title: Bridging the gap: How do we improve postgraduate student mental health and wellbeing?

Summary: Student wellbeing is linked with learning outcomes and satisfaction. With increased rates of self-reported mental health and wellbeing issues in university students, it’s important to foster wellbeing so students can engage and excel in learning. Co-designing co-curricular strategies with students was identified as necessary to identify facilitators and barriers to postgraduate student wellbeing. Postgraduate students from various health degrees participated in focus groups to consider three prompts: 1) What current curricula and co-curricular activities support your wellbeing? 2) What curricula and co-curricular activities are currently provided by the university that are unhelpful to your wellbeing? 3) What curricula and co-curricular activities does your course not currently offer that you believe would be most beneficial to support your wellbeing? Findings will inform the development of in-curriculum and co-curricular wellbeing approaches that can be integrated into postgraduate health focused courses. Implementation of these approaches will enhance student well-being and satisfaction with their university learning experiences.

Jess Lees - Physiotherapy

Title: What do physiotherapy students identify as important when designing a trauma- 
informed approach to peer-physical examination? A mixed methods action research study.

Summary: Peer physical examination (PPE) is a commonly used teaching practice in physiotherapy courses. PEP may risk student safety, particularly for those who identify as LGBTQI+, have a personal history of trauma, or are from diverse cultural, religious, and disability backgrounds A trauma-informed care (TIC) approach to PPE is inclusive of all experiences and may reduce risk to students. The aim of this project was to understand what Doctor of Physiotherapy (DPT) students identify as important when designing a trauma-informed approach to learning and teaching physical examination. 28 DPT students filled a survey on 11 TIC topics they perceived as important to include in PPE, and five students participated in two 60-minute follow-up focus groups. Results demonstrated students perceived all 11 TIC topics as important, with emphasis on meaningful consent processes and modelling of TIC principles. Focus group findings further highlighted the importance of consent processes being authentic and meaningful, and fostering a setting where students have more autonomy concerning PPE. By integrating these insights into curriculum design and hands-on assessment strategies, educators may enhance the effectiveness of PPE instruction, potentially improving student experience and subsequently better patient outcomes. Additionally, this approach could serve as a model for improving practices in other health professions that require the teaching of hands-on physical examination.

Jess Lees - Physiotherapy

Title: Teaching with and through technology: a framework for teaching physical examination in the digital age.

Summary: Despite the growing presence of digital technologies in clinical learning environments, there is little research into how technologies shape teaching and learning for health professional students. This study involved a qualitative interpretive approach, where clinical educators across various disciplines described their current practices for teaching physical examination to understand how digital technologies facilitate the development of bodily knowledge. A framwrok of five approaches of digital technology use was identified: for enhancing sensate knowing, for modelling, for rehearsing, for guiding practice, and for providing feedback. These findings suggest that in current teaching practices, digital technologies may be used to facilitate multiple essential elements of physical examination instruction.

A/Prof Karen Donald – Physiotherapy

Title: Experiences, beliefs and attitudes of health professional students of attendance hurdles for practical classes.

A/Prof Anthea Cochrane – Optometry and Vision Sciences

Title: The “after” effect: university academics support clinical educators teach clinical reasoning to students

Summary: Current health professional students gain clinical competency through learning theory and then going on to clinical practice. Whilst there’s high emphasis in preparing students for clinical work, opportunities to enhance student clinical reasoning skills after clinical experience has been underutilised. This study focused on enhancing post-placement academic interactions with students to encourage growth of clinical reasoning skills. Upon surveying optometry students in their penultimate year, evaluating outcomes and implementing interventions were the areas of clinical reasoning they struggled on most. Hence Anthea’s study will be assessing if teaching these clinical reasoning skills post-placement would enhance clinical acumen.

Mr Jonathan Ng – Optometry and Vision Sciences

Title: Otaro - An interactive and immersive E-platform to enhance student engagement; A blended interprofessional community of inquiry

Summary: The Otaro project is a collaboration between The University of Melbourne Faculty of Engineering and IT, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences and Industry partner AIBUILD to create an all-in-one digital learning technology platform allowing synthesis of immersive, interactive and innovative augmented/virtual reality teaching resources not restricted by physical location. This project looks to find ways of enhancing tertiary education through innovative technology and interprofessional learning as face-to-face learning returns. Optometry and Engineering students filled a survey based on their experience using an Otaro virtual interprofessional learning environment involving online video questions and two hospital settings. Quantitative analysis showed 80% of students agreed/ strongly agreed that virtual environments should feature in future teaching programs, and 85% felt similarly with interprofessional learning.

Some students suggested better design of the learning tasks could lead to more powerful education experiences. Discussion: Innovative technologies and interprofessional learning tasks have potential for revitalizing student engagement, communication skills and address social deficits post COVID-19. However student driven feedback is paramount for effective implementation.

Rachael Lim – Medical Education, Optometry and Vision Sciences

Title: Teaching methodologies and reflective practice in optometry education: a scoping review

Summary: Reflective practice is pivotal in health professional education, promoting ongoing learning and critical thinking. As optometry has expanded to a primary health care profession, there is an increased expectation for optometrists to actively reflect on their practice as part of professional development. This study aims to explore the current landscape of reflective practice teachings in optometry education to assess whether pre-professional education equips graduates for this aspect of their professional life. A scoping review searching six databases for relevant literature up to November 2023 found that studies focusing on reflective activities in optometry education primarily addressed soft skills development, curricular planning, and technical knowledge. Incorporating reflective activities was observed through structured activities like group discussions, portfolios and reflective writing, open-ended questionnaires and activities designed to prompt reflection-in-action responses. However, the review indicates that reflective teachings are not explicitly outlined in published articles and the effectiveness of how reflection has transformed student learning is not extensively discussed. Future research should include curriculum audits and student interviews to assess the efficacy and broader implementation of reflective practices. This study contributes insights into refining optometry curricula to better support reflective practice, thereby fostering comprehensive professional development in the field.

Dr Jia Jia Lek – Optometry and Vision Sciences

Title: Resilience and its associated factors in optometry students from eight institutions across six countries

Summary: With the increasing stress and burnouts faced by Australian optometrists, resilience is becoming increasingly recognised as an important healthcare attribute and supporting the need for resilience education when training students in healthcare. Jia Jia’s study aimed to evaluate the resilience levels in optometry students. Her online survey of optometry students across eight institutions in six countries highlighted that higher resilience was often associated with students who has higher self-efficacy, mindfulness, positive emotions, coping methods like acceptance and decreased behavioural disengagement. Additionally, higher resilience was associated with those who lacked financial assistance.

Dr Bao Nguyen – Optometry and Vision Sciences

Title: Self-reported behaviour change during patient interactions by optometry students after receiving feedback about their online interpersonal skills

Summary:  Bao’s previous study demonstrated that feasibility and effectiveness of providing optometry students with anonymous questionnaire feedback from patients and clinical educators on their interpersonal skills in a mock telehealth consultation. Extending from this, Bao reports the perceived usefulness of the activity and the feedback students gained, and subsequent self-reported student behaviour changes during patient interactions. Student feedback highlighted the usefulness of patient and teacher feedback for improving patient clinical competence, with students self-reflecting on seven prominent themes based on the feedback they gained: language and information delivery, communication techniques, patient-centered approaches, manner, relationship building, self-confidence and body language. Thus, using online teleconferencing and receiving both patient and teacher feedback is beneficial in upskilling future optometrists and helps them prepare for successful patient interactions.