The Australian and New Zealand Clinician Educator Network (ANZCEN) Unconference: What’s an unconference and how can it develop communities of practice?

ABSTRACT

The Australian and New Zealand Clinician Educator Network (ANZCEN) is a collaborative interprofessional group developed to promote the development of education in critical care healthcare practice. In November 2018, 45 critical care practitioners met at the first ANZCEN Unconference. In an unconference, the participants drive the agenda, and learning occurs from the active process of engaging in a community of practice. The aim of this unconference was to develop an innovative approach to learning through a collaborative framework with interprofessional representation across critical care specialties. Four key themes were identified in the unconference as drivers of interprofessional critical care educational priorities: interprofessional learning, workplace learning, faculty development, research, and scholarship. In this discussion paper, we describe our experiences organizing, participating in, and evaluating an unconference, and we examine its usefulness as a medium for promoting the interprofessional learning agenda in critical care. We hope that the processes outlined in this discussion paper will provide a useful resource for other clinicians who are considering developing an unconference. Finally, we argue that the unconference offers a unique and important model for future education of critical care practitioners where the emphasis on collaboration and communication through interprofessional learning and practice will be required to improve health outcomes and promote a patient-centered model of care.

KEYWORDS:

• Unconference
• heutagogy
• adult Learning
• engagement
• co-creation
• interprofessional
• peer support
• collaboration: community of practice

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Ross

Paul Ross is a clinical nurse specialist in ICU at Alfred Hospital, Melbourne. Paul is passionate about nurse education and holds a Masters in Adult Education. Paul is about to commence a PhD researching the art and science of nursing.

Kylie Moon

Kylie Moon is an ICU nurse at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, researching high performance resuscitation teams and resus education for a Masters in Clinical Education. Her research is aimed at identifying informal pathways, hidden curriculum and communities of practice used to develop high performance in resus, and improve the alignment of resus education to the clinical demands of ICU.

Annie Paras

Annie Paras BPT is an Intensive Care Physiotherapist who's passion is early rehabilitation and complex ventilator weaning. Annie has been involved with postgraduate teaching utilising high fidelity simulation for many years and is also working to build better postgraduate training programs for Physiotherapists wanting to enter the field of Intensive Care.

Paul Long

Paul Long is Founding Director of the Centre for Health Leadership. Paul is an alumnus of Harvard University Kennedy School, and holds senior academic posts at St Vincent’s Health Australia and the Clinical Excellence Commission, NSW, Australia.

Sheree Paterson

Sheree Paterson is a leadership development consultant, facilitator and executive coach who specialises in helping people to navigate complex systemic challenges and supporting the wellbeing of health professionals and the community. She has over 20 years’ experience working in healthcare organisations in frontline clinician, learning and development and senior management roles. Formal qualifications include Masters of Applied Science, Coaching Psychology, Masters of Education, Adult and Bachelor of Nursing.

Manisa Ghani

Manisa Ghani MbChB FACEM FCICM PGDipClinEd is an Intensivist and Emergency Physician based in Melbourne. She is currently completing her Masters study on the role of community of practice (CoP) in social learning. She is heavily involved in medical student teaching and is a Supervisor of Training (SOT) for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine trainees in the Intensive Care Unit.

Cameron Knott

Cameron Knott MBBS(Hons) PGDipClinUS MClinEd FRACP FCICM is an adult intensivist and Deputy Clinical Unit Head at Bendigo Health, Bendigo, Victoria. He also works as Academic Lead of the Clinical Skills and Simulation Centre, Monash Rural Health Bendigo and Honorary Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne Rural Clinical School. Cameron’s scholarly interests are in data-driven healthcare system improvement and clinical simulation for team development and patient safety.

Bruce Lister

Bruce Lister MBBS FANZCA FCICM MBA previously Paediatric Anaesthetist/Intensivist. Educator with College of Intensive Care Medicine of Australia and New Zealand. Current interests -health professions education in low resource settings - developing postgraduate training programs in critical care medicine in Pacific nations (PNG, Fiji) and local faculty development for APLS, Paediatric BASIC and Paediatric BASIC for Nurses courses globally.

Christopher Nickson

Christopher Nickson is an intensivist and is the Innovation Lead at the Centre for Health Innovation at Alfred Health in Melbourne, Australia. He is an Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor affiliated with Monash University's School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine. His work focusses on helping clinicians learn and enhancing the performance of individuals and collectives in health care.

Debbie Massey

Debbie Massey is an associate professor at SCU where she is the nursing discipline lead. Her areas of research include, teaching and learning and patient safety.