Development of multidisciplinary problem-based and objective structured clinical skill teaching plan for geriatric and long-term care

Students’ performance discrepancy existed between classroom teaching and clinical practice implementation, especially in the geriatric and long-term care clinical settings that students have to deal with and care the older people with disability or dementia. Recently, problem-based learning or objective structured clinical skill teaching and examination strategies have been implemented increasingly in medical teaching try to improve students’ clinical practice abilities. Many such teaching plans had been developed, however, most of them are for students major in medicine or nurse. There is lack of the kind developed specifically for the geriatric and long-term care clinical situations and clients. At first, we held 2 specialist meetings by inviting a multidisciplinary team of clinical teaching specialists, including geriatrician, nurse, physical therapist, occupational therapist, nutritionist, social worker, and caregiver. Two problem-based multidisciplinary home reablement case study and teaching plans – one for disability, one dementia, were developed, which were implemented in a workshop consisting graduate students of “comprehensive geriatric care course” and participants from clinical settings. Later on, another 2 specialist meetings were held and 4 objective structured clinical skill teaching and examination plans－ADL assessment and reablement goal setting skill, transfer skill, family member communication skill, health education skill for frail elderly, targeted to deal with common clinical care problems of older adults with mild/moderate disability or dementia were developed. Those OSCE plans were applied in another workshop held for the college students of “geriatric and LTC physical therapy courses”. Before that, we also held a training workshop for examiners and standardized patients. With feedbacks, all teaching plans were finalized after amendments respectively. Results from before and after tests revealed the workshop teaching process coupled with those multidisciplinary PBL cases and OSCE teaching plans significantly improve the knowledge, attitude, and skill of students or new staffs from multidisciplinary in the long-term care practice settings with high satisfactions. Further popularize the effective teaching plans and workshops should be beneficial to students and clinicians and may enhance the long-term care quality in our country.

Project ID:RP00000007
External Project ID:RP000000007200

01-Aug-2019