Project Investigator(s): Jane Xia, Instructor, Integration Activities, Pharmaceutical Sciences; Tony Seet; Aileen Mira; Paulo Tchen
Project Description
Teaching students to express empathy is important in a healthcare education curriculum because it builds patient trust, calms anxiety, and improves health outcomes.The purpose of the PACE project is to research the impact of exploring a patient’s journey on students’ level of empathy. Students will conduct patient interviews and analyze collected data to map patients’ journeys. Preliminary data from a similar directed studies project in 2019S indicated that students engaged in this type of activity develop improved empathy towards patients while enhancing their communication, interviewing, and research skills all of which are essential for any health care provider to provide effective patient care.
Research Questions
1. What aspects of the patient journey elicit the greatest impact on the student’s level of empathy after learning about the patient journey?
2. What other skills are students learning and gaining from conducting these types of patient interviews?
3. What types of guided reflection can best support student’s learning of the patient’s journey and level of empathy?
Impact on teaching and learning at UBC
On a program level, the PACE project will increase the importance and urgency of cultivating empathy in future pharmacy students. At the course level, this project will lead to integrating patient’s experience content into the therapeutics education. This will help contextualize students’ learning and allow them to appreciate the importance of empathy that will facilitate their care for the patients. In addition, the collected data regarding students’ experiences and patients’ journeys will both inform teaching and learning in health care faculties and teach them more about how patients navigate through the health
care system.