Aged Care Insite Issue 93 | February-March 2016 | Seite 35

workforce

healthcare facilities about issues related to
knowledge and experience if they haven’t
perhaps been a retired matron or a biology
teacher whose son is studying pharmacy?
They have to build a story and make
the links real. Then they’re in a position to
ask the students – when the students are
doing things – questions that might guide
the student to make a better choice, or to
review what they’re doing, or perhaps to
reassure them that what they’re doing is
the right thing.

What are some of the key learning
outcomes that you hope MASK-ED
will promote?
We’re good at teaching students the skills
they need. We’re quite good at getting
all the theory there, but often the part
students struggle with is those nontechnical skills, the communication skills,
such as being able to speak respectfully
to older patients to make them feel
comfortable, understanding how to
engage with them in a way that makes
them feel safe. This is building confidence

in our students and preparing them to take
care of the safety of their patients.

Via a series of road shows, SCU has taken
MASK-ED to staff in disciplines such
as occupational therapy, social work,
and speech pathology. How have these
disciplines received it?
What we’re trying hard to help our students
understand is that, as a professional, you
work inter-professionally. It’s rare in the real
world that you’d work only as a nurse and
not encounter any of the other disciplines.
Because this grant also involved seven
other disciplines, there’s sort of a duty on
us to share what we’re learning.
What we’ve found is that conversations
are so much richer when we hear from the
occupational therapists about the issues
they’re having preparing their students,
and where these might intersect with the
nursing students learning to work better
with patients. The richness comes if you
can get those two groups of students
together in the same encounter.
A speech pathology lecturer saw

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wonderful opportunities for the use of
MASK-ED in what she was teaching, and
the social workers can see where it will
help enhance the skills they’re hoping to
develop in their students, who will go out
and work with people from all walks of life,
and who have various health issues.

How easy is it to incorporate MASK-ED
into a curriculum?
As with any good learning activity, you
need to think about what it is you want the
students to learn from an encounter. You
need to consider how your learning activity is
going to encourage them and enable them
to do that. Then you need to ask yourself
how you would know they’ve learned.
It takes quite a bit of planning to make
sure you’re not just having it there for its
novelty value or to amuse the students.
You [have to think through] a particular
scenario that you believe one of these
MASK-ED characters is going to help bring
across to the students in a way that just
talking about it or a video or any other
encounter would not be able to do. ■

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