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Developing professional identities in a community of practice : learning in an interprofessional group led by a patient living with mental illness

University of British Columbia

While patient-centred care is being encouraged in practice, patient-centred learning is not always accommodated in the education of health professionals. Based upon Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger’s (1998) theory of situated learning, this study examined a community of practice consisting of an interprofessional group of students (medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, and pharmacy) who learned together from a teacher with a chronic illness as part of the Patients as Teachers Program (PAT). It examined developing health professional identities in this group in order to contribute to the discussion around patient-centred learning in health professional education using a qualitative approach. This study was guided by the following research questions: 1) How can an interprofessional group involving a patient as teacher operate as a community of practice? 2) How can situated learning in the interprofessional group involving a patient as teacher inform the professional identities of the students? The qualitative inquiry followed ethnographic methods of data collection that were recordings of the group meetings, program documents including students’ reflective journals, and one-on-one interviews with the five participants. The meeting recordings and interviews were transcribed. Thematic analysis using inductive and deductive approaches was used to analyze and interpret the data. The conceptualization of the PAT group as a community of practice highlighted the unique ways of participation in the group. The findings demonstrated developing professional identities among the students as a function of institutional positioning of a patient as a teacher in the program. The study also found that developing professional identities was taking shape in a holistic learning environment that included all of cognitive, relational and social ways of learning. This process of identity formation also involved dealing with uncertainties and developing multiple perspectives in relation to them. The study found that the students were developing health professional identities mainly in relation to their teacher and from the perspective of each of their own health professional programs. Interprofessional learning was a sequence to patient-centred learning in this context. The importance of patient-centred learning, difference of professional identities in different health professions and the role of discourses in shaping professional identities are also discussed.

Text

2020-01-08

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/73217

Human Development, Learning, and Culture

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/