What is Meaningful Involvement?: Epistemic Tensions in Patient and Family Partner Storytelling in Health Profession Education
Research Team: Qian Wu, Latika Nirula, Helen Sklarz, Brett Diaz, and Sacha Agrawal
Health professions education (HPE) curriculum and clinical teaching classrooms increasingly involve patient and family partners (PFPs), or service user educators, to tell their stories. Current inclusion practices, however, often fall short, without meaningfully shifting power relations among PFPs, faculty, and learners (Kalocsai et al, 2024). Our paper therefore seeks to understand how power has influenced PFP storytelling in HPE with a focus on epistemic tensions regarding who are knowers, what is legitimate knowledge, and what are appropriate ways to share knowledge. Our study found that the dominant view of knowledge in medicine and HPE presents tensions to PFP storytellers and their work. We assume that inclusion of PFP stories transforms, but HPE has yet to provide the rich soil for authentic, meaningful, and equitable storytelling to flourish, thereby enabling true transformations. This urges us to shift our perceptions on knowledge and power, be reflexive about our discomfort with emotions, and grow awareness of the educational paradigms that HPE operates from and practices. Our presentation will offer implications and considerations for CPD educators.
Speakers
Sacha Agrawal MD MSc FRCPC (he/him)
Staff Psychiatrist, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto
Sacha Agrawal MD MSc FRCPC is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and a staff psychiatrist and clinician educator at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He is also Advisor (Inclusion and Co-Production) at the Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare and Education. Sacha is passionate about his clinical work supporting the recovery of individuals with severe mental illness as a member and collaborative leader of two flexible assertive community treatment teams at CAMH. Sacha’s academic interests are in the areas of co-produced education and health equity and social justice education.
Latika Nirula PhD
Director, Centre for Faculty Development
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Dr. Latika Nirula leads the Centre for Faculty Development as Director, providing academic and operational leadership across the Centre’s initiatives to advance faculty development across the health system locally, nationally and internationally. She effectively applies her academic, teaching, and curriculum design expertise to innovative faculty development utilizing adult learning principles, simulation, and digital learning. Latika is building a research program focused on patient and family identity formation in faculty development and teacher performance enhancement. She also has a certificate in Brief Coaching which informs her solution-focused coaching practice within the Enhancing Teacher Performance Program at the CFD.
Latika holds an academic appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. She has a PhD from the University of Toronto in Developmental Psychology and Education. Latika is the recipient of a number of academic awards celebrating her contributions to faculty development and CPD.
Qian Wu PhD
Research Coordinator, Centre for Faculty Development
Adjunct Scientist, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St Michael’s Hospital
Dr. Qian Wu leads and coordinates research projects and knowledge mobilization efforts at the Centre for Faculty Development. Qian has years of experience in developing teachers’ competence and identity, and in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Her current research and practice feature the themes of incorporating anti-oppressive principles in educational practices, and coaching for teacher development, in the contexts of faculty development in health professions education.
Qian holds an adjunct scientist appointment at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute. She has a PhD in Applied Linguistics from The Pennsylvania State University.