The challenge of embedding a civic engagement dimension into undergraduate healthcare education: Reflections from the Department of Occupational Therapy, National University of Ireland, Galway
Margaret McGrath (NUI Galway), Deborah Hoban (NUI Galway)
Abstract
The manner in which healthcare services are provided has changed as a result of a global shift towards community based healthcare (Gitlow & Flecky 2005). In response to this change in practice healthcare educators are called to provide opportunities for students to become skilled in interdisciplinary collaboration and communication, and to be aware of, and responsive to the needs of diverse community settings (Gupta 2006). At the same time within the higher education sector there has been renewed interested in the extent to which the university can develop a sense of civic engagement and social responsibility amongst its students (Boland & McIlrath 2007) and increasingly there have been calls for health care professionals to have an understanding of the issues which surround social change and social justice (Reynolds 2006).
Service learning has been proposed as a method to address some of these concerns. Service learning is a pedagogical approach which enables students to combine service to their community with their academic programme in order to respond to a need identified by the community. Although in use across the United States since the early 1960’s the incorporation of service learning into European healthcare curricula is a relatively new phenomenon.
Since 2005 the Discipline of Occupational Therapy at the National University of Ireland, Galway has used service learning in order to facilitate the development of civic responsibility among undergraduate students. A pilot 12 week module was developed with support from the Community Knowledge Initiative in 2005 which focused on identifying unmet occupational therapy needs within the local community. During the period 2005 -2007 29 organisations worked in partnership with Occupational Therapy students to explore how occupational therapy might contribute to their work. In 2008 this module was extended across the academic year (24 weeks) and the scope of service by students was expanded to include direct occupational therapy provision for community organisations that have identified a need for occupational therapy input but do not have access to an occupational therapy service.
This paper will briefly describe the process of developing a service learning module in order to incorporate a civic engagement dimension into an undergraduate occupational therapy degree programme and will reflect on the challenges encountered by academic staff, students and community partners engaged in this type of learning. Key issues which emerge from this work include – finding space for civic engagement within professional curricula, differentiating between clinical education and service learning, ethical considerations in working with vulnerable community groups, issues of professional responsibility, ensuring equality in community-university partnerships and sustainability of service. Each of these issues will be explored in relation to our own experience and previous research in service learning in healthcare.
