Education through reflections:

It's been quite a while since I last posted a blog about my work and thoughts related to the disability field. Sometimes I wonder what I am thinking about my work as I just often react to the work coming my way with out always wondering why or how I am doing it. I'm sure many of us are like that in this fast paced and driven society. How many people reflect on what they do?

I actually feel a bit hypocritical in my work since one of my favourite things I do is supervise medical students who are part of a special program that we've initiated at UBC to increase collaboration across disciplines in health education, called the Inter-professional Health Mentors Program. This means that occupational therapy, physical therapy, nursing, dentistry, medicine, and speech pathology all are in this together as part of their first year training. It's optional still for most but some programs have made it mandatory. Students meet about once every 6 weeks in a multi-disciplinary group of 3-5 students along with a health mentor. The health mentor is someone who has a chronic illness or disability. Our mentors include those who are HIV positive, have bi-polar disorders, a spinal cord injury, born with cerebral palsy, etc. We have 51 groups of students. During each session they are guided through a variety of questions to keep the conversations going but it doesn't take long for these groups to "click", taking off on various tangents that are meaningful to them. I do most of my "supervision" through emails and I read their reflections that they are expected to write after each session. Although they take time, I am fascinated from what they learn that we fail to teach them during class or bedside teachings in medical school.

What they learn through this program is the contextualisation of medicine. Where in the patient's life does that visit with a family doctor or a specialist fall and what impact does it make? It's surprising how much the issue of a patient feeling "listened" to is one of the biggest differences to a successful approach. Even if the treatment is not overly successful the patient feels the doctor tried. The med students also learn the value of their team players from other disciplines.

Besides the obvious of teaching students about learning to work with other professionals and listening to their patients, they are learning to self reflect on what they are learning. At first there is often resistance to this part of learning but it does not take long before they are learning to use it to process difficult things. Unfortunately one of our mentors died during the program leaving the group to grieve their first "patient" so to speak. How do doctors and health care providers grieve in the midst of a busy clinic or hospital ward? We constantly talk about patient centred care but where are the health providers in this model? Who is taking care of them? We do teach them to take care of themselves, get rest and exercise, pace themselves, but is mostly talk and little reality when you see the pace that physicians and others professionals keep.

Using the practice of reflection is valuable. I once kept a journal before I was married but now fail to make the time. Talking one's day through with a spouse or friend is good but by the mere relatively slowness of writing something down, I believe we think differently. I do hope I can be better at this blogging thing for my own sake as a reflection of what I do professionally. I get so excited when I read the student's reflections because it does give me hope that we are creating doctors who will strive to listen to patients, considering their whole life and not just the limb or organ affected. We are complex beings and not simply a pathological specimen needing another drug.

How can I help mould these students as I reflect back to them in their journaling, challenging their assumptions and encouraging them to open their eyes and ears more as they learn. I feel incredibly privileged  to be able to read their personal  thoughts on how the program affects them. I can say that the students are amazing individuals who honestly want a better health care system for patients. Yes, they have ideals but that's where it begins.