July 2014
Launching the Cross-Professional Collaborations in Health Education Scholarship (CPCHES) Initiative
The June 20th launch of the CPCHES initiative was marked with a full-day event that brought together scholars from Dentistry, Emergency Health Services, Medicine, Midwifery, Pharmacy, and beyond to discuss what they have in common and ways they might collaborate in future scholarly endeavours.
The CPCHES initiative emerged out of two years of work by scholars from across UBC who saw a gap in the “formative” supports available to bring about cross-professional collaborations in health education scholarship. CPCHES aims to fill that gap by seeding efforts by health education scholars to come together from across professions to advance understanding about issues of common concern – and to build towards sustained collaborations.
At the launching event, an opening panel highlighted “Inspiring Questions” from the perspectives of three CPCHES Leadership Team members – HsingChi von Bergmann (Faculty of Dentistry), David Fielding (Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences) and Kathy O’Flynn-Magee (School of Nursing). Jumping off from those examples, event participants shared their own inspiring questions – and the commonalities that might bring them into scholarly collaborations across their professions. Over the course of the day, participants had opportunities to share their thinking about common concerns, consider how they might take them up as scholarly questions, and identify opportunities for collaboration.
Some of the strongest themes that emerged across the professions included: assessment practices (the development of authentic, meaningful and valuable integrated programmatic assessment that supports the learning of effective practice – rather than distracting from it); admissions (how do we know what difference new admissions processes make? – or if they make any difference?); cultures of health professions education (cultural norms, beliefs, assumptions, and practices); integration (academic-to-practice transitions, opportunities for shared curricula across professions); and moving beyond skills and knowledge (social responsibility, professionalism, ethical practice, caring and empathy). Participants identified a number of other themes at the launching event, and as CPCHES moves forward, organizers hope that new themes will emerge as others join the initiative and identify additional common concerns in health education scholarship.
In order to cultivate the development of cross-professions networks emerging from the themes, CPCHES will support collaborative teams in their formative stages. These cross-professional scholarly teams can be Learning Teams, which engage scholars in systematic learning about a common theme to build or enrich a collaboration, or Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Teams, which include scholars who are in the early stages of shaping a collaborative project.
CPCHES teams can request supports for their collaborative learning and planning, such as meeting facilitation, assistance in accessing resources like relevant literature or scholarly expertise, and advice on how to move forward. Another key support to be provided to CPCHES teams is help in connecting with other UBC resources (grant facilitation services, for example).
The CPCHES leadership team sees the initiative as one with a great deal of potential for moving health professions education forward in important ways while also supporting participating individuals to develop as scholars, improve their research grant competitiveness, and expand their perspectives on health professions education.
– Originally published in CHES Quarterly 5.1