What Do We Know About Uncertainty, and Teaching Around Uncertainty, in Health Professions Education? A Scoping Review

Moffett, J. and Hammond, J. (2019) What Do We Know About Uncertainty, and Teaching Around Uncertainty, in Health Professions Education? A Scoping Review. VSC Veterinary Education Symposium (VetEd 2019), Harpenden, UK, 03-05 Jul 2019.

Abstract

Introduction Managing uncertainty is central to practice in the health professions and the ability to cope with uncertainty is considered a day one competency for veterinary surgeons. Although there is a growing literature in this area, there has been a lack of clarity in how uncertainty is conceptualised, and approached in undergraduate education 1. The aim of this scoping review is to answer the ‘broader questions’ 2 concerning what is known about the concept of uncertainty in the health professions and the nature of the evidence for educational interventions in this area. Methods We used an approach based on Joanna Briggs institute guidelines 3. The presentation will describe the initial stages of the review process, specifically: • The research team • Scoping review protocol, including the search strategy • Pre-test exercise to evaluate reviewer agreement • First round of screening (title and abstract) • Second round of screening (full text review) Results 4681 records were identified through database searching and an additional 34 records identified through other sources. After duplicates were removed, a total of 3336 records were screened (title and abstract), of which 667 were eligible for inclusion in the second round (full text review). Discussion Preliminary results suggest that uncertainty is an area of discussion for most health professions, yet there is no clear educational approach to address the topic. We outline teaching and learning strategies as well as recognising uncertainty ‘bedfellows’ such as ethics, clinical reasoning, communication, professionalism, evidence based medicine and end-of-life topics. References 1. Luther VP, Crandall SJ. Commentary: ambiguity and uncertainty: neglected elements of medical education curricula? Acad Med J Assoc Am Med Coll. 2011;86(7):799-800. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21715991. 2. Tricco AC, Lillie E, Zarin W, et al. A scoping review on the conduct and reporting of scoping reviews. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2016;16(1):15. doi:10.1186/s12874-016-0116-4. 3. Peters MDJ, Godfrey CM, McInerney P, Baldini Soares C, Khalil H, Parker D. The Joanna Briggs Institute Reviewers’ Manual 2015: Methodology for JBI Scoping Reviews.; 2015. www.joannabriggs.org. Accessed March 15, 2019.

• Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item
• Status: Published
• Refereed: No
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Hammond, Professor Jennifer
• Authors: Moffett, J., and Hammond, J.
• Subjects: R Medicine > R Medicine (General)
• College/School: College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Biodiversity, One Health & Veterinary Medicine
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2019 The Authors
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced with the permission of the Author