Dissecting through Barriers: A Follow-up Study on the Long-Term Effects of Interprofessional Education in a Dissection Course with Healthcare Professional Students

Several studies have shown significant improvements in the attitudes and perceptions of healthcare professional students toward interprofessional education (IPE) immediately following intervention with IPE courses. However, there remains little evidence on the lasting effects of IPE courses and the long-term influences of these IPE experiences are poorly documented. The purpose of this study is to assess the long-term effects of an intensive, ten-week interprofessional gross anatomy dissection course at McMaster University. Attitudes and perceptions of past participants towards interprofessional learning were evaluated, now that they have started working with other healthcare professionals outside of the IPE course setting. Thirty-four past participants who have clinical experience working in interprofessional settings or are currently working in the healthcare field completed a follow-up questionnaire consisting of a modified Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS) and open-ended questions. Quantitative analysis revealed a significant decrease in their attitude towards teamwork and collaboration and respect for other health professions, but a significant improvement in their understanding of roles and responsibilities compared to their results immediately after the IPE intervention. Qualitative analysis of open-ended questions revealed several themes such as developing interprofessional competencies, developing relationships, and remembering the strengths of the IPE dissection course. The results of this study indicate that the IPE experience in anatomy was highly valued by the students and that past participants maintain a clear understanding of their scope of practice, but the reality of clinical practice may have eroded gains made in the program. Anat Sci Educ. © 2018 American Association of Anatomists.     

Art Education for Life

In this paper I argue that art is a search for meaning, and should be taught and learned in that context. The immediate goal is to understand ourselves and others better, allowing more intelligent and meaningful action in the arena of life. Toward that end, I suggest that the social agenda of art education, in a world that is both increasingly interdependent and turbulent, can be the construction of community through personal, group–centred, and cross–cultural understandings approached through art. I examine traditionalism, modernism, postmodernism, and contemporary visual culture for content and strategies to serve the purposes of art for life, and construct the outline of a model for instruction utilizing those concerns. Finally, I make a case that thematically mining and creating art works, performances, and visual culture for aesthetic significance that ultimately frames, forms and enhances meaning is the primary strategy for this construction of community, not in the tribal sense, but universally.     

Transformation between orbital parameters in different coordinate systems of the general relativistic schwarzschild problem

The relationships between the osculating orbital elements for a family of solutions of the general relativistic Schwarzschild problems are developed. These relationships provide a method for evaluating orbital elements in different Schwarzschild coordinate systems without the necessity of fitting to real data every time the system of coordinates is changed. The objectivity of different coordinate systems is discussed. Considerations of orbital motions favor the standard Schwarzschild metric, but the propagation of light signals is more objective in the metric of Painlevé. Because the orbital motions usually dominate the representation of data, the standard Schwarzschild coordinates are the best objective choice for most applications.     

The small-gain theorem,the passivity theorem and their equivalence

Two small-gain theorems and a passivity theorem yielding stability results for general feedback systems are shown to be equivalent.     

Australian Higher Education Research and Society

This is the second part of a review of research on higher education since World War II. Fart I, published in the previous issue of this Journal, examined how research responded to post‐war reconstruction of the later 1940s and the rising community expectations for education of the 1950s and 1960s. In Part II the themes are equality of opportunity and the end of expansion. By the mid‐1960s many researchers were questioning the representativeness of participation in higher education and the nature of the education process. More recently some of the research questions have been reminiscent of the late 1940s, that is, how can the efficiency of higher education be improved. Whereas expansion and optimism characterised the first thirty post‐war years however, the context is now one of reduced resources and some pessimism.     

Communication: One key to mainstreaming success

Mainstreaming the exceptional child necessitates that regular and special teachers work much more closely today than in the past. The most important element for successful mainstreaming is effective communication (Schubert & Glick, 1981). This article describes the collaborative consultation model as one approach to attaining good, effective communication.