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Assessment of Health Humanities in Health Professions Education: principles and strategies

Oral Presentation
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Presentation Description

Sandra Carr1
1 The University of Western Australia 



Background
There is an absence at present of a consistent framework for health humanities learning, teaching and assessment, and hence, little capacity for systematic evaluation within or across curricula. 


Summary of work
A scoping review of qualitative and mixed-methods studies that included the assessment of integrated health humanities curricula in pre-registration health professions education was completed. The review was extended by an exploration of the assessment principles applied in integrated health humanities education. 


Results 
Fourteen of 24 reviewed studies evaluated student learning achievement from the health humanities intervention. They evaluated the capacity of the health humanities curricula to enhance knowledge, or skills, or both - linking the intervention with the intended learning outcome. Only three studies evaluated the impact of the educational interventions on changing students’ behaviour. 


Discussion
Three guiding principles surrounding the assessment of health humanities became apparent in the review. 1. Students engaged in the act of creation to demonstrate achievement of health humanities capabilities. 2. They always engaged with the object/prompt created through reflection and the articulation of reflective thought. 3. The assessment commonly explored values and beliefs that had informed the students perspective. These principles along with examples of assessment strategies used in health humanities education will be explored at presentation. 


Conclusions & Take Home Messages
These three guiding principles align with Mezirow’s transformative learning theory and offer educators some structure when designing assessment of integrated health humanities learning in health professions education. 



References (maximum three) 

Carr, S.E., Noya, F., Phillips, B. et al. Health Humanities curriculum and evaluation in health professions education: a scoping review. BMC Med Educ 21, 568 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-03002-1 

Carr, S.E., Harris, A., Scott, K. et al. InspirE5: a participatory, internationally informed framework for health humanities curricula in health professions education. BMC Med Educ 22, 490 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03551-z 

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