The role of patients in the education of health professionals, including both diagnostic and therapeutic radiologic technologists, deserves consideration. One RSNA 2021 course offered relevant research and toolkits to help educators put the patient at the heart of training.
St. John-Matthews
Janice St. John-Matthews MSc, clinical fellow to the chief allied health professions officer (CAHPO) at NHS England and Improvement, discussed the importance of involving patients in training for the health professions.
“Actively involving patients in health professions education has not always been common practice in the U.K.,” St. John-Matthews said. “It wasn’t until the early 2000s that patient involvement became a core aspect of England’s health professions training.”
She said social work and mental health nursing were instrumental in driving patient-centered education forward to the point that the National Health Service (NHS) and the College of Radiographers both now emphasize patient-practitioner partnerships as integral to delivering personalized patient care.
“The radiologic technologist must strike a balance between the technical side of the profession and patient care,” she said. “We must ensure we are focused and patient-centric.”
Patients as Partners in Curriculum Design
St. John-Matthews offered concrete ways educators can capture patient voices and enlist the public as co-creators in the training of radiologic technologists. She also highlighted several tools organizations can use to benchmark and track their progress on public/patient involvement.
“There are several ways patients can be engaged in the training process, from curriculum design and the recruitment and selection of students to practice-based activities and trainee assessments,” she said.
St. John-Matthews stressed the importance of engaging patients of all ages, ethnicities and religious backgrounds when enlisting the public involvement. She provided a checklist of ‘Five Ws’ to ask when considering patient involvement in health profession education:
- Why should we include patients and the public in curriculum design?
- When should we include patients and public in our curriculums
- Who are we including, how inclusive is our patient and public group
- Where do we include them (if at all)?
- What can we do to further include them?
“There is no group we don’t meet in our day-to-day work as radiologic technologists,” she said. “Radiographers must feel comfortable interacting with and caring for patients from different backgrounds and cultures, so they can support the individual needs of every patient they encounter in their professional role.”
Access the presentation, “Patient Voice: The Power of Patient Engagement on Education and Service Development,” (T1-CAS07) on demand at Meeting.RSNA.org.
