We offer a hands-on clinical experience, graduate seminars, and two Certificates in Health Advocacy.
Students often choose to study at the Center for 2-3 semesters. Our Clinical Education Guidelines outline our expections for each semester of study.
Our educational model is learner-directed. While studying at the Center's Clinical, students decide what skills they need to hone, what experiences they want to have, and what style of learning is best for them. This includes thinking about how students will work with their direct supervisor,and what projects they will engage in addition to working with clients.
Our educational model is complementary - this means that learning of advocacy skills and knowledge is designed to complement and enhance scholarship in home disciplines. 1 We believe that everyone working in and around the health system is, or should be, an advocate; advocacy should be incorporated into everyone's job description. For long-term systemic change, we believe that advocates must work both from within and without the health care system. We believe in taking advocacy into practice.
We have also designed an intentionally transdisciplinary experience - where students work interprofessionally, e.g. collaboratively with students and staff from diverse professional backgrounds - law, medicine, public health, social work, pharmacy, public affairs, science, etc. - to offer holistic client-centered advocacy. Since the focus of the Center is health advocacy - a conceptual framework that is new to each student - the work of the Center can be characterized as transdisciplinary. We believe that interprofessional skills can best be learned on "neutral" ground where everyone's expertise is equally valued and everyone is a new learner about the core work of health advocacy. We also believe that collaboration and teamwork bring richness and creativity to problem-solving.
Should you choose to study at the Center, we hope you will learn skills relevant to tomorrow's careers and life. Consider these essential competencies garnered from business, industry, and government leaders 2,3 :
Our program is designed to support intrinsic values and motivations, including community contribution (including service orientation and a desire for good for others), autonomy, personal growth, communication, creativity and holistic thinking. 4 Studies have shown that students' decline in well-being is significantly associated with a shift towards more extrinsic values (grades, class ranking, income potential, participation in traditionally valued endeavors) and away from intrinsic values. 5 We encourage you to embrace our approach to advocacy and incorporate it into your approach to life and work. We want to ensure that future professionals are learning all they need to excel in tomorrow's increasingly sophisticated industries and fields and to live satisfying lives.
During one's time at the Center for Patient Partnerships, students develop transferable patient advocacy skills as they work with real clients to address their problems in a clinical education/ "service learning" environment. The pedagogical goals of clinical education are "action-based;" to teach students to not only "think like a advocate," but to "act like an advocate," analytically, professionally, and effectively. The first principle of clinical education is that the student advocates are the primary advocates on their cases. With consistent and predictable support and teaching from the supervising clinical faculty, Center students assume full responsibility for the cases, projects, and clients assigned to them. This responsibility creates the conditions for the most enduring and meaningful learning to occur. 6
Because the clinical learning occurs while working with people with life-threatening and serious chronic illnesses, our pedagogy relies upon critical reflection to ensure high quality, ethical advocacy for all clients.
Students participate in the advocacy process as a "reflective practitioner" who is able to identify "choice moments" 7 - the moments in advocacy at which choices can be made - by the advocate, client or other party. Critical reflection also enhances practitioners' skills, "improving competence and promoting professional development." 8
The critical aspect of critical reflection involves "linking a reflective approach with a critical analysis" where we account for systemic inequities and power imbalances. 9 In other words, reflection is about self-reflection and systemic-reflection. Asking: "How can I change my assumptions?" and "What systemic barriers limit the framing of this problem, and consequently the solutions?"
As an interdisciplinary center, students are exposed to supervisors and colleagues from a variety of professional backgrounds. Critical reflection in an interprofessional environment allows for amazing creative problem-solving, as individuals from diverse disciplines share their perspectives on a problem. By working with other professionals, you will learn other perspectives on issues presented in advocacy cases- and be able to incorporate holistic approaches in your advocacy.
Reflecting on process is especially important in advocacy work, as there is often no "right" solution to any one case. Regardless of a case's "outcome," the key is for our clients to feel engaged in, or resolved about, the process of advocacy.
"Providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions." - Institute of Medicine, Crossing the Quality Chasm, 2001
The Center is committed to the goal of a patient-centered health care system - where patient centeredness is incorporated on the macro (organization) and micro (patient-provider interaction) level. Patient-centeredness, broadly, refers to designing systems and interactions that are responsive to patients. Patient-centeredness is sometimes described as seeing the illness and health care experience "through the patient's eyes." 10
A patient-centered approach, often focuses on the illness experience - the personal experience of the sickness - in addition to the disease experience - the physical aspects of sickness. Think of holistic healing as more than curing a disease; ideally patients will get better physically and personally. 11
While a majority of our advocacy work is on the micro level, we encourage advocates to constantly ask if a systemic change would benefit our clients. If such a systemic change is obtainable, we will work to institute that change. If it is a more long-term solution, we will help advocates determine what piece the Center - and individual advocates - can play in that change.
1 M. Hurst, M. E. Gaines, R. N. Grob, L. W., S. Davis "Educating for Health Advocacy in Settings of Higher Education" in Patient Advocacy: Patient Centered Strategies for Improving Healthcare Quality. Edited by J. Earp, E. French, M. Gilkey. Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc. (08/07) (In interdisciplinary parlance, our complementary model is decribed as "parallel socialization." See Trevillion S. & Bedford L. (2003) Utopianism and pragmatism in interprofessional education. Social Work Education 22, 215-227, p. 219.)
2 Fink, L.D., 2003, Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, CA, 295 p.
3 Wirth, Karl R. & Perkins, Dexter. Learning to Learn Version 2: January 2008. Available from: http://www.macalester.edu/geology/wirth/CourseMaterials.html (Citing Gardiner, L., 1994, Redesigning Higher Education: Producing Dramatic Gains in Student learning. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report 7, Washington D.C., George Washington University.) These core competencies are also reflected in Fink's Significant Learning Taxonomy, see Fink, supra 4.
4 Weinstein, J. & Morton, L. Papers Presented at the UCLA/IALS Conference on "Enriching Clinical Education": Interdisciplinary problem solving courses as a context for nuturing intrinsic values, 13 Clinical L. Rev. 839 (Spring, 2007).
5 Weinstein and Morton, supra, 6. Citing Kennon M. Sheldon and Lawrence S. Krieger, Does Legal Education have Undermining Effects on Law Students? Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-Being, 22 Behav. Sci. Law 261, 263-64 (2004)
6 Adapted from NLP Pedagogy & Expectations. Available at: http://www.law.wisc.edu/fjr/clinicals/eji/nlp_expectations.pdf
7 Chavkin, David F. "Clinical Methodology" in Clinical Legal Education, p. 9.
8 Karban, Kate & Smith, Sue. Developing critical reflection within an interprofessional learning programme at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/medicine/meu/lifelong06/papers/P_SueSmith_KateKarban.pdf (Citing Clouder, L. (2000). Reflective Practice in Physiotherapy. Studies in Higher Education. 25 (2) 211-223.) ; Schön, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, p. 26.
9 Karban, Kate & Smith, Sue. Developing critical reflection within an interprofessional learning programme at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/medicine/meu/lifelong06/papers/P_SueSmith_KateKarban.pdf (Citing Fook, J. (2002). Social Work: Critical Theory and Practice. Sage, London.)
10 Id.
11 Clark, P. G. What would a theory of interprofessional education look like? Some suggestions for developing a theoretical framework for teamwork training. Journal of Interprofessional Care, December 2006: 20(6): 577-589: 584 (Citing Schön, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, p. 3.)
