Educators’ experiences of development schools to promote the facilitation and leadership of person-centredness in healthcare curricula

Whilst professional regulatory and policy standards advocate the education of healthcare students for person-centred practice (NMC 2018; WHO 2020), there is a paucity of literature about the effectiveness of interventions to support educators in achieving this (O’Donnell et al.2017).
This presentation will provide a brief overview of a three-year Erasmus+ Project focusing on the development of a Person-centred Curriculum Framework (PCCF) (O'Donnell et al. 2022) and its underpinning philosophical principles (Dickson et al. 2020). Drawing on the PCCF, two innovative development schools will be outlined. The first 5-day school focused on developing educators as facilitators of person-centred curricula, was delivered in May 2022 (n=42). The second school, for leaders who influence person-centred curricula (n=26), was delivered for five days during July 2022 and included four additional monthly half-day, virtual workshops from September to November 2022.

As this project involved partners from six universities across five countries, the Schools’ evaluation was set within the principles of collaborative inquiry. Multiple methods were used to collect data including pre- and post-school questionnaires to measure respondents self-reported understanding and confidence in facilitating/ leading person-centred curricula. Qualitative data included records of participants’ hopes, fears and expectations, reflective responses to critical questions and written daily evaluations. Participants from both schools were also invited to take part in an online, audio-recorded evaluation workshop in November 2022 to explore to explore enablers and challenges in applying the PCCF and their views regarding the impact of the schools on their practice.

The findings revealed a cognitive shift in participants thinking from viewing curricula through a traditional lens, to one that envisions and achieves success through collaborative endeavour. Participants typically reported that their perspectives on facilitating or leading person-centred curricula were transformed with greater clarity on implementing the PCCF.