Identifying how policy proposals are selected by policy-makers is an important question for scholars. This thesis evaluates the use of discourse and the role of actors in the exchange of ideas to support interprofessional collaboration (IPC) among Ontario’s regulatory colleges. A variation of discourse analysis was developed, based on the seven areas of reality that are constructed by language, to evaluate the interactions between state and policy actors. I argue that actors did not appear to engage in meaningful discourse because the state established the parameters of the consultative processes, which suggests the expert consultative processes were tools to legitimize the policy process for Bill 179. The state appears to have increasingly greater control of both the content and context of policy- making in this field. Further evaluation of the interactions between health professional organizations and the state is needed to better understand the importance of discourse in the health policy process.

No description available.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being implemented in various industries and shows promise within healthcare. AI has potential to perform tasks that a professional would traditionally do, and it thus looks to be a disruptive technology. Professional workers, like physicians, are likely to resist such implementations to protect the high status of their profession. As professional workers and healthcare hold significant roles in society, we found that research on how they are affected by AI is needed. This study takes place in the beginning of the introduction in Swedish hospitals. To gain insight into how physicians accept and relate AI to their professional work, we ask the question ‘Do physicians see AI as a threat to their professional role?’ With an abductive, qualitative case-study approach we have conducted eight semi- structured interviews with physicians with various experience and knowledge of working with AI. Theory of institutional work for maintenance allowed for more grounding in answering our question. Further, realisations from previous studies on change served to explain why our findings did not turn out as expected. We highlight a perspective of viewing technological change as a link in a chain of events, rather than studying one implementation at a time.

Thesis: M.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1977 / Bibliography : leaves 148-153. / M.S. / M.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Anatomy Academy (AA) is a service-learning program in which pre- and current health professional students (Mentors) work in pairs to teach anatomy, physiology, and nutrition to children in the community. The purpose of this study was to investigate the short- and long-term Mentor outcomes in personal, social, civic, academic, and professional domains. Former Mentors were invited to complete a survey of Likert-style and free response questions evaluating the perceived impact of their AA experience on: teaching skills, personal and interpersonal development, civic engagement, and academic and professional development. Follow-up interviews with a subset of survey respondents were performed. The survey was completed by 219 Mentors and 17 survey respondents were interviewed. Over 50% of former Mentors reported moderate or major impact of AA participation on elements of personal and interpersonal development (e.g., selfesteem [57.6%], altruism [67.9%], communication skills [60.1%], and ability to work with others [72.6%]) and community service participation (54.2%) that endures in the years after the program. Mentors who worked with low-income or Special needs populations reported unique impacts in personal, interpersonal, and civic domains. A majority of former Mentors agreed that AA participation helped them learn practical skills (76.3%) and factual knowledge (65.4%) relevant to the their careers, with several current health professionals reported that they regularly employ teaching and interpersonal skills learned while Mentors in their roles as physicians, nurses, or physician’s assistants. A majority of former Mentors reported that AA validated their choice to either pursue a healthcare career or not (59.7%), increased their confidence in performing professional tasks (64.7%), and helped shape their professional identity (58.9%). These results indicate that a health education-based service-learning program offers undergraduate, graduate, and professional students interested in or actively pursuing a healthcare career benefits across personal, interpersonal, civic, and professional domains that support their academic progress and preparation for professional practice. This study contributes much-needed evidence of the long-term student outcomes of service-learning to the literature, with a particular focus on how the pedagogy can supplement the education and professional development of pre- and current health professional students.

No description available.

Leadership in the health sector continues to be recognized as a key factor in improving healthcare and is considered part of professional competence in health professions. In dietetics, the Integrated Competencies of Dietetic Education and Practice, a document which informs dietetic education and professional development in Canada, was recently revised to include leadership as part of a new competency domain. But with limited research on dietetic leadership, it is challenging to develop and assess leadership skills in dietetic trainees and dietitians. My thesis addresses this gap by exploring how leadership is currently developed and used in practice through a three-phase qualitative design. The theoretical framework and conceptual model was pulled from complexity theory, leadership theory as well as feminist theory. The LEADS in a Caring Environment framework was used as the specific leadership framework. It is recognized as a comprehensive model for leadership in healthcare designed to embody the key skills, behaviours, abilities, and knowledge required to lead in all sectors and types of organizations. A multi-phase qualitative study was conducted, which included documentary analysis, one-on-one interviews with dietitians, and focus group interviews with dietetic educators. The methodology aligned with complexity science where interactions within and between the individual, micro-, meso-, and macro- levels were considered throughout the study. Furthermore, issues related to gender and other forms of diversity as crosscutting influences were considered. To inform this research, an expert committee comprised of dietitians from different practice areas was involved. Phase I included a documentary analysis of program documents and one focus group with dietetic educators to elaborate on their programs. In Phase II, using a multi-case study methodology, dietitians’ leadership skills development and use in practice were identified. Finally, Phase III focused on determining actions and implications of my research findings from Phases I and II through three focus groups with dietetic educators. The findings showed that dietitians tend to describe leadership in relation to having a formal management role. My study found that leadership skills have not been explicitly taught through dietetic education, but some are developed through transferrable skills that can be useful in leadership. The findings also demonstrated that dietitians use leadership skills in a variety of ways and contexts throughout their careers. All four cohorts provided personal examples of their leadership skills in practice that aligned with each of the LEADS domains and most of the capabilities. This might suggest that although dietitians were not formally taught leadership skills through their dietetic education, there is evidence that they possess and use leadership in their different practice areas throughout the career trajectory. This research furthers the scholarship on leadership development in dietetics and considers the complexities of leadership in a highly gendered system.

There is strong evidence that certain neurophysiological processes link action and observation (Higuchi et al., 2012), which supports the idea that learning a motor skill is enhanced via skill observation (Hayes et al., 2010). Skill learning through observation is optimized when the observation includes a combination of expert and novice models (Rohbanfard and Proteau, 2011). The purported advantage lies in the two types of models’ dissimilar ability (Andrieux & Proteau, 2013). The novice model is characterized by larger margins of error that manifest as variable attempts. Increased variability has been shown to be beneficial in physical practice (Moxley, 1979). The purpose of the first study was to examine the observation of novice variability effect to explore whether it is Schmidt’s (1975) generalized motor programs or schema parameterization representations that is acquired when observing modeled performances. Participants engaged in an observational period in which they observed a criterion model with no variability, a model demonstrating absolute timing variability, a model demonstrating relative timing variability, or a model demonstrating variability in both relative and absolute timing. The results indicate that variability in relative timing information contributes to observational learning, which suggests that generalized motor programs are acquired through observation but not schematic parameterizations. The purpose of the second study was to apply the Rohbanfard and Proteau (2011) paradigm in the medical education context by exploring the impact of video-based observational practice on the clinical learning. First year medical students learned a common surgical skill by observing expert demonstrations of the skill, novice demonstrations, or demonstrations by both an expert and novice model. The study demonstrated a robust effect of observational learning in that all groups improved over time regardless of the type of model they observed. Both studies highlight that an expert model may be the most beneficial when engaging in observational practice. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

No description available.

No description available.