TY - JOUR

T1 - Development of a brief learning environment measure for use in healthcare professions education

T2 - the Healthcare Education Micro Learning Environment Measure (HEMLEM)

AU - Isba, Rachel

AU - Rousseva, Christiana

AU - Woolf, Katherine

AU - Byrne-Davis, Lucie

PY - 2020/4/9

Y1 - 2020/4/9

N2 - BackgroundThe learning environment impacts many aspects of healthcare education, including student outcomes. Rather than being a single and fixed phenomenon, it is made up of multiple micro learning environments. The standard clinical learning environment measurement tools do not consider such diversity and may fail to adequately capture micro learning environments.Moreover, the existing tools are often long and may take a prohibitive amount of time to complete properly. This may have a negative impact on their usefulness in educational improvement strategies. In addition, there is no universal tool available which could be utilised across several healthcare student groups and placement settings.AimTo create an evidence-based measurement tool for assessing clinical micro learning environments across several healthcare profession student groups.MethodsThe measurement tool was developed through a step-wise approach: 1) literature review with iterative analysis of existing tools; 2) generation of new items via thematic analysis of student experiences; 3) a Delphi process involving healthcare educators; 4) piloting of the prototype; and 5) item reduction.ResultsThe literature review and experiential data from healthcare students resulted in 115 and 43 items respectively. These items were refined, leaving 75 items for the Delphi process, which produced a prototype with 57 items. This prototype was then completed by 257 students across the range of healthcare professions, with item reduction resulting in a 12-item tool.ConclusionThis paper describes a mixed methods approach to developing a brief micro learning environment measurement tool. The generated tool can be used for measuring student perceptions of clinical environments across several healthcare professions. Further cross-cultural and cross-professional validation studies are needed to support widespread use, possibly through mobile application.

AB - BackgroundThe learning environment impacts many aspects of healthcare education, including student outcomes. Rather than being a single and fixed phenomenon, it is made up of multiple micro learning environments. The standard clinical learning environment measurement tools do not consider such diversity and may fail to adequately capture micro learning environments.Moreover, the existing tools are often long and may take a prohibitive amount of time to complete properly. This may have a negative impact on their usefulness in educational improvement strategies. In addition, there is no universal tool available which could be utilised across several healthcare student groups and placement settings.AimTo create an evidence-based measurement tool for assessing clinical micro learning environments across several healthcare profession student groups.MethodsThe measurement tool was developed through a step-wise approach: 1) literature review with iterative analysis of existing tools; 2) generation of new items via thematic analysis of student experiences; 3) a Delphi process involving healthcare educators; 4) piloting of the prototype; and 5) item reduction.ResultsThe literature review and experiential data from healthcare students resulted in 115 and 43 items respectively. These items were refined, leaving 75 items for the Delphi process, which produced a prototype with 57 items. This prototype was then completed by 257 students across the range of healthcare professions, with item reduction resulting in a 12-item tool.ConclusionThis paper describes a mixed methods approach to developing a brief micro learning environment measurement tool. The generated tool can be used for measuring student perceptions of clinical environments across several healthcare professions. Further cross-cultural and cross-professional validation studies are needed to support widespread use, possibly through mobile application.

U2 - 10.1186/s12909-020-01996-8

DO - 10.1186/s12909-020-01996-8

M3 - Journal article

VL - 20

JO - BMC Medical Education

JF - BMC Medical Education

M1 - 110

ER -