Education Commons^™

About Dying And Death: Thanatology's Place In Medical Curriculum, Jill Dombroski

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study explored how healthcare providers engage in advance care planning and end-of-life care conversations. The research explored what shapes their understanding and the extent to which concepts from thanatology they intuitively bring in, explicitly bring in, and maybe fail to recognize. To achieve this, constructivist grounded theory (CGT) methodology guided the design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation of the findings, which allowed for iteration across interviews and analysis with existing theories and data in the literature. The CGT design encouraged further engagement with the literature in an ongoing iterative fashion as well as with the analysis of the data. …

Quality Assurance In Competency Training Of Pre-Anesthesia Consultation Skills, Michelle Wong

The Dissertation-in-Practice at Western University

The absence of quality assurance in training clinicians to perform pre-anesthesia consultations at a Canadian university is the Problem of Practice addressed in this Organizational Improvement Plan. This competency requires learners to apply their anesthesia knowledge to take medical histories; perform physical examinations; diagnose anesthetic risks; and generate anesthesia plans. Random chart audits of many learners identify deficiencies and suggest inconsistent training of this competency. This Organizational Improvement Plan analyzes the anesthesia program’s organizational context to be a complex adaptive system; organizational structure to be a hierarchy; and organizational state to be static. Through the paradigms of complexity theory, interpretivism, …

Expanding The Concept Of ‘Care’: A Narrative Study Exploring Lessons From End-Of-Life Patients To Inform ‘Medical Assistance In Dying’ Curriculum In Canada, Jill Dombroski

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research primarily investigates what we can learn from patient experiences that can help inform the expected curricula that will be developed in response to the new Canadian legislation regarding Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). This is a compelling area of research because of the rapidly evolving attitudes in the general population — largely driven by terminally ill patients asserting their legal rights over their bodies and the decision to put an end to their lives as a consequence of the illness they face. The issue of medical assistance in dying has been patient initiated and patient driven. Through the …

Exploring The Role Of Procedural Variations In Surgical Education, Tavis Apramian

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Variations in practice and procedure permeate clinical work. While clinical research routinely investigates the consequences of these variations for clinical outcomes, we have little understanding of their implications for education. The current policy environment in medical education makes developing a new understanding of the role of variations in medical education especially important. Current policy reforms in the assessment of learners draw on the notion of competence to suggest that medical education should focus on the performance of learners in the workplace. The current turn toward workplace-based assessment positions the observations of faculty into key functions in these assessment frameworks; therefore, …

Validation Of A Novel Methodology For Evaluating Surgical Tissue Plane Identification, Syed T. Ali

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Introduction: The ability to identify tissues planes is a fundamental surgical skill. This study attempts to validate a previously developed test for assessing this ability.

Methods: 48 video captured images from laparoscopic right hemicolectomies were presented on an iPad to 18 surgeons who were grouped based on experience (Consultants (C), Senior trainees (S), and the Junior trainees (J)). Subjects were asked to draw a line indicating the tissue plane of dissection. Lines were compared by a modified Hausdorff measure. Within group variability represented group precision and trainee accuracy was determined from comparison to Consultants.

Results: Within group comparisons demonstrated Consultants …