Expanding access to healthcare for people who use drugs and sex workers: hepatitis C elimination implications from a qualitative study of healthcare experiences in British Columbia, Canada.

Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major health threat in Canada. In British Columbia (BC) province, 1.6% of the population had been exposed to HCV by 2012.

Guiding Principles for Patient and Public Engagement in the Educational Missions of Medical Schools.

Purpose: The purpose of this research was to cocreate with patients and the public a set of evidence-informed guiding principles for their authentic, responsive, ongoing, and sustainable engagement in the mission, goals, curriculum, and delivery of medical education.

Method: A set of guiding principles of relevance to medical education was identified from the literature. Eight focus groups with patients and community members representing a wide variety of perspectives were conducted in April and May 2022.

Patient/public perceptions on engagement with a medical school: What needs to happen to support authentic and sustained participation.

Purpose: Patient/public involvement in health professional education is increasing but remains episodic, narrowly focused, reliant on individual enthusiasts, and lacks supportive institutional infrastructure. There is little evidence-informed practical guidance on how to take a more strategic and formal approach. We undertook a qualitative study to learn from patients and the public how medical schools could engage in an authentic and sustainable way.

Breast Cancer Patients' Preferred Source and Timing of Nutrition Information.

It is important that breast cancer patients know where they can access evidence-based nutrition information because misinformation may lead to confusion for patients regarding dietary requirements, as well as potentially causing harm to health. There are gaps in knowledge about where and when patients seek nutrition information. Our exploratory study used telephone interviews to investigate where patients with breast cancer obtained nutrition information pre and postdiagnosis, and their preferred sources and timing for receiving nutrition information.

Patients benefit from mentoring students in an interprofessional health mentors program: A contextual-developmental analysis.

Purpose: Mentorship programs in health professional education are often characterized as a mutually beneficial relationship between mentor and mentee, but little is known about benefits for mentors. Mentors can be health professionals, academic faculty, other students (peers), and patients (health mentors). We studied the benefits that health mentors (people with chronic health conditions or disabilities, or a caregiver) get from mentoring students, and the contextual factors that contribute to, or explain these benefits.

Patient Partners in Continuing Professional Development: Experience Developing an End-of-Life Care Program for Family Physicians.

Involvement of patients in continuing professional development (CPD) is less developed than in health professional education at undergraduate or postgraduate levels. Although patients are sometimes involved in delivering CPD, they are less likely to be involved in education planning. At our institution, patients have sometimes acted as consultants in the design of CPD.

Cancer survivors exercise at higher intensity in outdoor settings: The GECCOS trial.

Purpose: This randomized cross-over group pilot trial assessed feasibility of recruiting survivors from a long-term follow-up clinic to an exercise group and measured whether outdoor or indoor exercise sessions better supported exercise motivation and behaviors in survivors of cancer.

Methods: Sixteen adolescent and young adult survivors of any cancer completed indoor and outdoor exercise sessions in this randomized cross-over pilot trial. Measures of physical activity, motivation, and fatigue were taken 2 weeks before and 2 weeks after indoor sessions and 2 weeks before and 2 weeks after outdoor sessions.

Deaf and hard of hearing awareness training: A mentor-led workshop.

Background: People who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) comprise a significant and increasing proportion of the population. They face many barriers to accessing good health care and major communication challenges with health professionals. There is evidence that DHH awareness training for health professionals needs improvement but little information about how such training is incorporated into curricula.

Professional Identity Formation: A Role for Patients as Mentors.

Purpose: Medical education should foster professional identity formation, but there is much to be learned about how to support learners in developing their professional identity. This study examined the role that patients can play in supporting professional identity development during the University of British Columbia Interprofessional Health Mentors Program (HMP), a longitudinal preclinical elective in which patients, or their caregivers, act as mentors and educate students about their lived experience of a chronic condition or disability.

Method: The authors interviewed 18 medical residents in 2016, 3 to 4 years after they completed the HMP.

Patients and students co-develop a resource database.

Health professional students are provided with a wealth of online learning resources recommended by curriculum developers or instructors, the majority of which focus on biological and clinical science. Our goal was to develop a database of learning resources to help students and faculty members understand chronic health conditions from a patient's perspective. Resources were recommended by patients and evaluated by students.

The regional medical campus model and rural family medicine practice in British Columbia: a retrospective longitudinal cohort study.

Background: Regional medical campuses have been implemented across North America to address gaps in the physician workforce. We report findings from a study that examined the association between a combined model of regional medical campuses and students' decision to enter rural family medicine practice.

Methods: In 2004, the University of British Columbia added 2 regional medical campuses, 1 in a large population centre in a rural and coastal context and 1 in a medium-sized population centre in an isolated northern and rural context.

How patient educators help students to learn: An exploratory study.

Introduction: Benefits of the active involvement of patients in educating health professionals are well-recognized but little is known about how patient educators facilitate student learning.

Method: This exploratory qualitative study investigated the teaching practices and experiences that prepared patient educators for their roles in a longitudinal interprofessional Health Mentors program. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven experienced health mentors.

The community comes to campus: the Patient and Community Fair.

Background: Community-based learning connects students with local communities so that they learn about the broad context in which health and social care is provided; however, students usually interact with only one or a few organisations that serve a particular population. One example of a community-based learning activity is the health fair in which students provide health promotion and screening for local communities.

Context: We adapted the health fair concept to develop a multi-professional educational event at which, instead of providing service, students learn from and about the expertise and resources of not-for-profit organisations.

"How to do things with words" in health professions education.

This paper reports on a qualitative study of journal entries written by students in six health professions participating in the Interprofessional Health Mentors program at the University of British Columbia, Canada. The study examined (1) what health professions students learn about professional language and communication when given the opportunity, in an interprofessional group with a patient or client, to explore the uses, meanings, and effects of common health care terms, and (2) how health professional students write about their experience of discussing common health care terms, and what this reveals about how students see their development of professional discourse and participation in a professional discourse community. Using qualitative thematic analysis to address the first question, the study found that discussion of these health care terms provoked learning and reflection on how words commonly used in one health profession can be understood quite differently in other health professions, as well as on how health professionals' language choices may be perceived by patients and clients.

Shifts in the interpretation of health advocacy: a textual analysis.

Context: Health advocacy is widely accepted as a key element of competency-based education. We examined shifts in the language and description of the role of the health advocate and what these reveal about its interpretation and enactment within the context of medical education.

Methods: We conducted a textual analysis of three key documents that provide sequential depictions of the role of the health advocate in medical education frameworks: Educating Future Physicians for Ontario (1993), CanMEDS 2000 and CanMEDS 2005.

The expert patient as teacher: an interprofessional Health Mentors programme.

Background: To meet future health care needs, medical education must increase the emphasis on chronic illness care, interprofessional teamwork, and working in partnership with patients and families. One way to address these needs is to involve patients as teachers in longitudinal interprofessional educational programmes grounded in principles of patient-professional partnerships and shared decision-making.

Context: The University of British Columbia has a history of initiatives designed to bring patient and community voices into health professional education.

A phase 3, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of the safety and efficacy of the live, oral adenovirus type 4 and type 7 vaccine, in U.S. military recruits.

Adenovirus (ADV) types 4 (ADV-4) and 7 (ADV-7) are presently the major cause of febrile acute respiratory disease (ARD) in U.S. military recruits.

Patients as educators: interprofessional learning for patient-centred care.

Background: Patients with chronic conditions have unique expertise that enhances interprofessional education. Although their active involvement in education is increasing, patients have minimal roles in key educational tasks. A model that brings patients and students together for patient-centred learning, with faculty playing a supportive role, has been described in theory but not yet implemented.

Developing a medical school: expansion of medical student capacity in new locations: AMEE Guide No. 55.

Background: A concern about an impending shortage of physicians and a worry about the continued maldistribution of physicians to medically underserved areas have encouraged the expansion of medical school training places in many countries, either by the creation of new medical schools or by the creation of regional campuses.

Aims: In this Guide, the authors, who have helped create new regional campuses and medical schools in Australia, Canada, UK, USA, and Thailand share their experiences, triumphs, and tribulations, both from the views of the regional campus and from the views of the main Medical School campus. While this Guide is written from the perspective of building new regional campuses of existing medical schools, many of the lessons are applicable to new medical schools in any country of the world.