Leveraging the GAMER Model across Health Professions: Working Complex Landscapes

• In Event: Creating Community, Navigating Boundaries, and Traversing Diverse Landscapes: Evolving Education Researcher Identities in Rehabilitation Professions

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes: The need for health professions to intentionally develop more education researchers is shared across health professions. While the development of clinical researchers is a strong focus in the health professions and receives the majority of attention (structure, resources), the development of education researchers is lacking.1,3,15 This paper shares mechanisms for expansion of the Grant writing and Mentorship in Education Research (GAMER) model from physical therapy (PT) to professions in the rehabilitation sciences as an innovative model that crosses our disciplinary landscapes.

Perspective/Theoretical Framework: The expansion of the GAMER model to other health professions requires what Wenger-Trayner and colleagues12 describe as the need for system conveners, working in complex landscapes (our health professions) together to forge a new learning partnership (interprofessional GAMER model).7,12 The critical mechanisms for our model were influenced by the Wenger-Trayner and colleagues’ work: 1) leveraging national leaders from the health professional associations as systems conveners (advisory committee), 2) ensuring the planning activities for the collaborative model are grounded in a shared assumption to respect and challenge boundaries that are inherent in our disciplinary landscape, and 3) linked to an overall aim, to develop more education researchers in our disciplines as a sustainable model.

Steinert and colleagues21 posit that professional/faculty development leaders and programs can advance change at an organizational level through four domains: promoting individual and group development; advocating for infrastructure and resources, influencing policies and procedures, and contributing to organization-wide initiatives. In our interprofessional GAMER model, the engagement of “conveners” at the national professional association level contributes to our shared work and aspiration of education research renewal and culture change within our professions. While our focus is on individual professional development of education researchers, it is the system-wide conveners that can contribute to profession wide initiatives and change.

Method: We used a sequential implementation model in expanding the GAMER model from one health profession to three other health professions. 22

Results/Mechanisms: In Phase 1, an essential mechanism was using our existing interprofessional networks and relationships to invite two health professional association leaders (American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) and American Speech-Language-Hearing Association/ASHA) as presenters on an interprofessional education research panel at GAMER. In Phase 2, these leaders attended and were participant observers in the full GAMER program as we began to forge our new learning partnerships. 7 In Phase 3, core PT organizers implemented the interprofessional advisory committee (system conveners)12 through monthly virtual meetings. The committee approved an Advisory Board Charter (membership/n=6, responsibilities, and quarterly meetings) for a 3-year commitment to support expansion of GAMER to the interprofessional model. In the final mechanism, the system conveners recruited education researchers representing the four professions to serve as application reviewers and implemented recruitment efforts for GAMER applicants through a neutral website managed by the interprofessional advisory committee.

Scholarly Significance: Reconfiguring complex landscapes is long-term work, often faced with enduring COP boundaries and rigid practices. The successful expansion of the GAMER model centered on the critical importance of system conveners provides evidence of work towards a sustainable model.

Authors

• Gail M. Jensen, Creighton University

• Chris Sebelski, Saint Louis University

• Terrence Nordstrom, Samuel Merritt University

• Patricia S. O'Sullivan, University of California - San Francisco