Communication skills and diversity competence for students of vocational Schools for Medical Professions: Design thinking for participatory medicine

Vocational education of future healthcare workers plays a crucial role in preparing them to enter the workforce of fast-evolving medicine. One of the crucial changes healthcare system is facing is...

The main objective is to design, pilot, implement and evaluate the DesignCARE curriculum and course for the students in secondary and post-secondary medical vocational schools that will help them to engage in participatory medicine through the promotion of the development of communication skills and diversity competence, in line with ethical principles. Besides creating the DesignCARE program, the goal of the project is also to train the teachers to be able to design a course that encourages skill development, research-based learning, creativity, and student cooperation among peers and with their teachers. We will train the teachers to use inclusive, collaborative design thinking methods as an innovative educational strategy. Design thinking is a mindset and approach to learning, collaboration, and problem-solving. In practice, the design process is a structured framework for identifying challenges, gathering information, generating potential solutions, refining ideas, and testing solutions. The students will profit by gaining increased capacity to learn in online learning as well as in the group environment, which focuses on both knowledge and skill development.

The activities within the projects were the following: DesignCARE 1st transnational (kick-off) meeting – the first meeting was held on February 21, 2022, at which UNIST presented the project, main goals and results, partners voted on the Steering Committee members, platforms to be used for meetings and materials (Google Meets, Google Drive). A financial, communication and dissemination plan, as well as a Quality Assurance Plan were presented. The partners designed the logo. All materials are available to partners on the Google Drive platform. Training – the activities in the project include staff and student training. Staff training allowed the participants to acquire the competencies necessary for the successful implementation of the project. Immediately after the kick-off, the Training on design thinking for curriculum design; training on diversity competence and communication skills; training on participatory medicine and ethics and RRI was held. Work on curriculum design (curriculum map, learning outcomes) also started that week. The focus groups - In order to get the input from all relevant stakeholders, two focus groups were organized, one by Colegiul Mihai Eminescu (May 2022) and one by UNIST (June 2022). Curriculum framework - The topics with learning outcomes to be covered by the course were defined in the following period, in terms of knowledge, technical and life skills, attitudes and values for each of the topics, as a part of the curriculum framework. The second transnational meeting was held in September 2022 in Copenhagen, Denmark, where partners had media communication skills and creation of video content training, and the creation of the online content for the DesignCARE online course started. The decision on the best option for an online server that can be accessed by all partners and is user-friendly was made, which was Moodle Mod. In the following period, the partners continued to work on the creation of the content: written, video and additional materials and creating the activities and evaluation for students. DesignCARE 3rd transnational meeting – the final meeting was held in Bacau, Romania, on March 30-31, 2023. During that time, the partners assessed the content of the thus far designed course and activities and discussed the preparation for the pilot testing of the curriculum and course for the students of two medical vocational schools at secondary and post-secondary levels in the EU. Piloting the DesignCARE: after the materials were uploaded and the course on the Moodle Mod platform was ready, the piloting started in July with students of Colegiul Mihai Eminescu in Romania. After summer, the piloting continued in Croatia in September, with students from Medicinska škola Pula. We additionally included eight students from Medicinska škola Split, which is not a partner in the project, but was highly motivated to participate. Web page and Facebook page were created. https://mefst.unist.hr/znanost/erasmus-projekti-11479/designcare/11958 https://www.facebook.com/Communication-and-diversity-Design-thinking-for-participatory-medicine-102287092408845

The concrete outputs and results produced by the project are: 1. The curriculum framework with learning outcomes for the development of communication skills and diversity competence in participatory medicine; 2. Online course consisting of 5 modules: Participatory medicine, Diversity, Communication with patients and relatives, Empathy, Ethics and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). Educational materials and resources to foster students’ development of transversal skills and key topics knowledge, include 23 videos and video transcripts, 6 obligatory texts, quizzes and 14 activities and assignments to be performed online or in person in a classroom; 3. Capacity building of at least 15 trained teachers able to implement the educational resources designed in daily teaching; 4. 50 students trained (knowledge and skills development), with certification and badges; 5. Evaluation of Train the trainer activity and Evaluation of DesignCARE pilot; 6. Coordination and participation of all partners and stakeholders in the co-creation process; 7. Internationalization of the participating organizations.