Achieving collaborative workplace learning in a university critical care course.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Nursing Education
• Critical Care Training

Background:

• Traditional critical care curricula face challenges in integrating theoretical knowledge with practical skills.
• Effective training requires addressing both student workload and educator responsibilities.
• Evaluating curriculum effectiveness necessitates student and educator perspectives.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the development, implementation, and evaluation of a new critical care curriculum.
• To examine challenges faced by lecturers and clinical educators.
• To compare student evaluations of the new curriculum against the previous one.

Main Methods:

• Utilized comprehensive meeting notes during curriculum development and implementation.
• Conducted focus group interviews with students before and after curriculum implementation.
• Administered quality-of-teaching surveys to two distinct groups of critical care students.

Main Results:

• Fostered a sense of curriculum ownership among clinical educators.
• Identified difficulties for clinical educators in fulfilling their roles.
• Addressed challenges in merging theoretical learning with clinical practice and student workload.

Conclusions:

• Collaborative workplace learning is valuable for developing and delivering university critical care courses.
• This approach strategically addresses key challenges in critical care education.
• The new curriculum shows promise in enhancing the critical care learning environment.