TRAINING. For the past year, the Institute of Health and Care Sciences has been working in close collaboration with healthcare services to deliver five “VIL” projects. “VIL” refers to integrated workplace learning, a pedagogical model that develops students’ knowledge that brings together targets, existing knowledge and the experience they gain during clinical work with patients, others in the health and care team, and close relatives and sees them “interacting.”
For healthcare to be safe and effective, healthcare professionals must work closely together with each other, and with patients and close relatives. As such, the different professions need to make use of each others’ knowledge.
The five VIL collaboration projects were delivered under the supervision of docent Helle Wijk, one of which was conducted on ward 18 in the vascular surgery department at Sahlgrenska. A special student room was set up here in collaboration with the university and SU training unit. From here, students doing their VFU (clinical training) as part of either their nursing or health & social care course care for four patients, all of whom have undergone various procedures, on the ward. The work is done in a team that also includes students from other professions.
Research has shown that using the VIL model in this way helps students to develop better teamwork skills, and improves their critical thinking and ability to reflect, compared to more traditional teaching methods.
Furthermore, research also shows that active collaboration between students reduces feelings of insecurity and inadequacy and makes it easier to overcome difficulties and challenges, which in turn increases self-confidence.
Something to which Linda Andersson, one of the nursing students who did their VFU on ward 18 this fall, can attest:
“It was a really nice experience, and taught me a lot. Above all, it was good to be able to work things out with other people. And that we could help each other,” she says.
One of the people responsible for delivering the project is Monica Petterson. She is a college lecturer and nurse and divides her time between SU and the Institute of Health and Care Sciences.
“When we started planning this project, our aim was to create an academic environment within the workplace itself,” she tells us, before continuing:
“On ward 18 of the cardiovascular department, people had a positive attitude toward participating in the project.”
That said, the VIL project was not just about the student room on ward 18 – three different workshops were also held during the fall. These gave nursing students the opportunity to meet other students and discuss and analysis the events that transpired when they were providing care on ward 18.
The topic for the first workshop was teamwork and collaboration, which is essential for all work in healthcare. In these situations, it is important to be familiar with each others’ skills and expertise, but, as it transpired, there is often a lack of this kind of knowledge.
The focus of the second workshop was assessment and decision-making. This revealed that different professions make assessments in different ways, which can affect both the length of time in the healthcare system as well as leading to complications. That’s why knowing which consequences a decision may have is an important discussion in which all healthcare professionals should take part.
The project’s third and last workshop was held as recently as last week. On this occasion, the topic was communication and conflict management, and saw around 20 people gather in Lagerbladet to perform drama exercises based on the participants’ own experiences, together with Margret Lepp and Mona Ringdal.
Margret Lepp is a Professor of Health and Care Sciences, specializing in health care education, at the Sahlgrenska Academy. She believes that traditional theory-based teaching must be developed if nurses are to be given the best-possible opportunity to meet the requirements of life in the profession.
One way of doing so is to make use of drama pedagogy:
“Drama pedagogy stimulates the imagination and our ability to empathize; it is a form of learning that allows us to work together, reflect together, and develop personally and professionally,” says Margret Lepp.
To increase patient safety in healthcare, being able to solve communication problems and conflicts that arise during encounters with patients, relatives and colleagues is important. Participants in previous exercises have been known to say “I had no idea that it feels like that to be a patient” afterwards.
Tremendous empathy was a major feature of the drama exercises performed at Lagerbladet, given that they were based on the participants’ own experiences. Participants acted out scenes in which one flippant remark from a colleague (or a relative’s reaction) was interpreted in a way that created conflict. The idea behind this drama exercise is that participants become better able to act so that they can tackle these kinds of problems and improve patient safety. The session concluded with some time spent on discussion and reflection.
Last week’s workshop marked the end of the project for the students taking part. The project will, however, now continue in the form of analysis and evaluation of the findings:
“We will be sitting down next week to review what we did during the fall. I don’t know yet which conclusions we’ll be able to draw from the whole process, but the feedback we received from students after the workshops we held in the fall was positive,” says Monica Pettersson.
TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDERS BERG, SU/SAHLGRENSKA
