Author
Dr. Bonnie Sawatzky, BPE, MPE, Ph.D. Department of Orthopaedics (biography and disclosures)
Disclosures: No disclosures.
Disclaimer: No disclaimers.
What I did before:
Early in my academic career (2000-2010), my primary role with undergraduate medical learners was to deliver lectures during their second-year, and facilitate small group problem-based learning case studies. We did not talk about the patient’s voice in education, nor were patient perspectives present during student research electives or summer experiences in my clinical research at BC Children’s Hospital and ICORD (a spinal cord research centre). When they did participate, my goal was to teach basic research skills like ethics, consenting and data collection and analysis. Their learning from patient participants was minimal.
What changed my teaching practice:
Two key experiences reshaped how I teach research to undergraduate medical students:
The first was serving as a medical student supervisor for the Health Mentors Program (2011–2016)[1]. In this interprofessional program, first-year medical students learned from a health mentor, a person living with a chronic illness or disability, alongside students from other health professions. Through year-long small-group discussions, students gained deep insight into what it means to live with a chronic condition outside of the healthcare system. They had time to ask questions, listen, and understand patients as real people rather than just “cases”.
The second influence was the Flexible and Enhanced Learning (FLEX) program, introduced in 2019. FLEX allows medical students to explore topics of personal or professional interest, often through faculty- or community-based research projects. This program increased student engagement with my lab’s work on mobility and spinal cord injury or related conditions, creating new opportunities to integrate patient perspectives.
What I do now:
Over the past seven or eight years, I started including patient partners in my own research and their presence allows students to learn from them early in their project planning. From hearing stories in the Health Mentor’s Program, I saw that conversations with patient partners helped students understand not only the scientific rationale for a study but also the lived realities and priorities of the patient community.
In general, students who do FLEX conduct literature reviews, develop proposals, write ethics applications, collect and analyse data, and prepare manuscripts, often over a four-year period through FLEX blocks and summer research opportunities. I include patient partners early in this process to give students a tangible connection to the people their research focuses to benefit. They become more motivated to persist through the challenges of clinical research, and they develop a deeper appreciation for the broader context of living with a disability or using a wheelchair.
Patients, in turn, value these opportunities to share their stories and insights[2,3]. Many express a strong desire to teach medical students, hoping to foster greater empathy and understanding among future physicians. When learners engage with patients outside the clinical setting, they are reminded that people with disabilities or chronic illnesses lead full, meaningful lives.
They are not to be “fixed” or pitied, but are experts on their conditions and should be understood and respected and contribute to the shared decision making in their care[4].
I have yet to meet a patient partner who wished to be described as “wheelchair bound”. Every one of them prefers the term “wheelchair user”. Research and medical education are most powerful when they truly include the patient’s voice.
How my experience is relevant to teachers in the Faculty of Medicine:
With more learners seeking research opportunities, providing them with more diverse opportunities to understand patients’ perspectives is valuable. Also, involving patients through research or educational activities within academic half day sessions or grand rounds also enriches learning from the patient’s voice for all levels of health professional training.
References
- Towle A, Brown H, Hofley C, Kerston RP, Lyons H, Walsh C. The expert patient as teacher: an interprofessional Health Mentors programme. Clin Teach, 2014;11(4):301-6. doi:10.1111/tct.12222
- Kline CC, Riganti P, Moller-Hansen A, Godolphin W, Towle A. Patients benefit from mentoring students in an interprofessional health mentors program: A contextual-developmental analysis. Med Teach, 2022;44(7): 730–6. doi:10.1080/0142159X.2021.2020737
- Ivory KD, Luscombe G, Klein LA, Barratt A. “Thank You for Giving Me a Voice!” A Longitudinal Evaluation of Patients’ Experience of Partnering With Students in an Australian Medical School. J. Med. Educ. Curric. Dev. 2017;4. doi:10.1177/2382120517692776
- Eggeling, M, Bientzle M, Korger S, Kimmerle J. The Impact of Patient Narratives on Medical Students’ Perceptions of Shared Decision Making: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Medical Education Online 2021;26(1). doi: 10.1080/10872981.2021.1886642
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