Transformative Learning as the Basis for Teaching Healing

Abstract

The author describes the nature of transformative education, and highlights the potential importance of its implementation in creating physician-healers and propagating whole person care. The author proposes that teaching courses in healing are integral to the professional identity formation of "doctors as healers".The teaching of Healing in workshop format for medical students is used as a template to suggest innovative teaching models which may be used to engender personal transformation in doctors and medical students.

Flipping social determinants on its head: Medical student perspectives on the flipped classroom and simulated patients to teach social determinants of health

“…Students were motivated by imminent examinations and their long-term goals of becoming better clinicians. Transformative learning, which informed the development of the teaching innovation, would also account for this longer-term goal of improved clinical practice (Kearsley 2015). The task of taking a purposeful social history also gave the session immediate applicability to hospital and community clerkships students were undertaking at the same time (Martinez et al 2014).…”

Features of Evolved Adaptive Responses (FEAR): an evolutionary-developmental model of psychological trauma and common psychological conditions

“…Modern medicine has made great advances in treating conditions such as infectious disease and physical trauma and in the development of medical technologies for imaging, surgery and pharmacotherapy. Consequently, a 'Medical model' of healthcare has come to emphasise the primacy of technology, knowledge and technical competence in driving clinical outcomes 163,165 . However, evidence indicates that common human factors including empathy, understanding, shared goals, positive regard, genuineness and forming a therapeutic alliance with the client can produce large clinical benefits, and in the psychotherapies -common human factors have been shown to produce greater therapeutic benefit than the particular intervention used.…”

Use of Blended Learning in Higher Education €“ Some Experiences

“…Of particular significance to blended learning is the work of Lev Vygotsky, a social constructivist. He coined the term 'zone of proximal development', which refers to the stages of what a student can do, ranging from the lower limit to the upper limit of the student's potential (Kearsley 2000). According to Bezuidenhout et al (2005), the necessary guidance in blended learning is made possible through facilitator-learner interactions and learner-learner interactions.…”