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 Back to Position Papers
The ultimate challenge? Higher education for adapting to change and participating in managing change
Introduction
We hope that you will consider the reasons for our suggestion that future graduates of all disciplines and professions, in every country should to be able to adapt themselves to change and to participate in the management of change - not only within their own discipline or profession, but also on behalf of society at large.
The latter responsibility will call for interdisciplinary, interprofessional and international collaboration with governments across the world. We will summarize our reasons and then consider the consequences for change in higher education - and thus The Ultimate Challenge for all universities.
Within the constraints of the limits set for a Position Paper we will attempt to undertake this task by addressing a series of questions.
1) Which changes are likely to face the health professions during the life span of our graduates?- The emergence of new diseases and a further increase in anti-microbial resistance.
- Accelerated transmission of infectious diseases, due to air travel, tourism, adverse living conditions and migration.
- A growing pandemic of non-communicable disorders, largely due to inappropriate life styles – with consequent affect on earning power.
- Growth in the number of elderly patients with a range of needs for health care.
- Persistent unequal access to health care services with consequent economic and social disadvantages.
- Continuing advances in science and technology with their ethical and economic impact on the quality and quantity of life.
- Social and educational changes, as well as global information technology in a consumerist environment tend to increase the expectations of clients and patients with consequent impact on their relationship with members of the caring professions.
- Changes in the respective roles and status of the professions, together with growing emphasis on interprofessional collaboration, as well as a drive for evidence-based practice and accountability.
- Of quite major consequence may be the global exacerbation of civil and armed conflict that affects our security and, indeed, the safety of our patients and our families – world wide.
We accept that these are but some examples of the changes that bear on the professional and personal lives of our colleagues.
2) Which changes, not only local but dependent on global developments, are likely to influence every one, not only the health professions, not only in one country but world wide? Which changes should thus be regarded as of supra or pan-professional and international concern?- The continuing economic burden of having to service large national financial debts, not infrequently aggravated by an imbalance in international commercial relationships (viz the disappointing outcome of the G 8 2006 Meeting).
- Continuing growth in the number of the world’s population existing at or below subsistence level.
- Unregulated use of technology exacerbating the overuse of irreplaceable raw material, related to geopolitical tension, e.g. for access to oil and also to water.
- Reduction of biodiversity, continuing desertification and pollution of soil, air and water with resultant detrimental influences on the entire global environment and global climate change (McMichael et al, 1996).
- The continuing expansion of the world’s population is likely to contribute significantly to these global problems.
3) What, then, ought to be the responsibility of the professions, including the caring professions in relation to such supra-professional problems?- The essential research, as well as related mitigating and resolving interventions are primarily of an international, interdependent, long term nature.
- However, governments might not wish to hazard popular support during their limited tenure without an assurance of major support from a segment of the community which can provide expert, long term and non-political support. Such support for the necessary research, mitigation and remediation of the interrelated causes and consequences of our global problems would necessarily involve the full spectrum of disciplines and professions, including agriculture, architecture, behavioural sciences, engineering, geography, health, law, sociology, veterinary sciences.
- As the problems are so interdependent, the professions would need to be prepared to contribute collectively from their constantly growing experience and expertise towards the national and international exploration of the causes and consequences of the world’s major problems.
- Just how realistic is it to expect all the professions to adopt such wide ranging commitments?
We would propose that the professions would need to consider a major change which would enable them to extend their traditional responsibilities to include outward looking, proactive, interprofessional and intersectoral collaboration.
Our proposition is, therefore, that the next generation of professionals should benefit from an education which is deliberately aimed to equip them with the requisite abilities and skills for adapting to change and for participating in the management of change which requires interprofessional collaboration.
This extended role as collaborators in confronting the intricate problems of our planet would contribute significantly to a renaissance of the corporate reputation and standing of the professions.
4) Why should the caring professions take the initiative?
Human values were sadly ignored during the last century, and the prospect f significant change towards universal respect of human dignity and welfare is not promising at the beginning of the present century.
Yet what would be the quality of human existence in the absence of human alues?
Numerous examples could be cited to support the claim that the caring professions should be acknowledged as the guardians of human values. As long ago as 1847 Rudolf Vircho, the father of pathology, wrote in his report on the typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia The improvement of medicine will eventually prolong life, but improvement of social conditions could even now achieve this result more rapidly and more successfully. The physician’s responsibility is to serve as the advocate for the poor (Vircho, 1847). More recently Graham Watt wrote in the British Medical Journal (1996). We should take a moral lead as educators and advocates on the issue of social exclusion. In the same issue the editor of the journal referred to the author by writing In particular he wants doctors to renounce their silence and start to speak up about the aspects and implications of poverty and deprivation. Christine Ewan in Australia (1985) contributed what may be the first major paper on aspects of social responsibility in medical education.
Since then the World Health Organisation (1991) has been a key protagonist for the emphasis on social responsibility in health sciences education. Perhaps the most telling recent example is based on the personal experience of the Professor of General Practice, University of Western Australia, where he observed how Aborigine children with upper respiratory problems were treated repeatedly, yet nothing was done to resolve the underlying causes of their recurring infections (Kamien, 1996).
What was so clearly needed were fundamental improvements in housing, sanitation, family planning, improved nutrition and equality of opportunity in education and work. Kamian quoted Chase (1965). Looking at a man with the naked eye, he is an individual. Looking at him with a microscope, he is a biological specimen. Looking at him from the long view, he becomes a unit of society, bound into its culture with bolts of steel. The doctor needs all three perspectives to do justice to his mission. The health professions will need to show the way to the other professions by also taking a global view, as well as a view focused on the individual exclusively. After all, what would be the value of caring for the individual, if life for all were to become too hazardous and eventually impossible for survival?
5) What, then, ought to be the responsibility of Higher Education?
Could universities justify an ‘ivory tower’ image by isolating themselves from the stark realities that face our planet?
Noblesse oblige – let privilege be matched by responsibility.
This position paper suggests that the universities of the 21st Century should accept the responsibility of ensuring that their graduates will be able to adapt to change and participate in the management of change - not only within their own profession, but also on behalf of society at large. The linking of societal responsibility with participating in the management of change will expect the universities and thus their graduates to accept supra-professional responsibilities for interprofessional and intersectorial collaboration.
This is the Ultimate Challenge to the Universities
The Full Members of the Network: TUFH accepted the implications of this proposition at the General Meeting of the Network: TUFH at its biennial conference in Mexico City in 1997. At the subsequent biennial conference at Linköping a plenary presentation cited the Network: TUFH’s acceptance of this challenge as one of three major programmes to be undertaken by the Network: TUFH in the new century (Engel, 2000).
6) How might this Ultimate Challenge be approached?
In order to explore this question, one of the authors (CE) undertook a limited Delphi consultation with some one hundred senior educators from Medicine, Nursing, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy in France, Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. Limited funding made it necessary to restrict the consultation to just a few countries in Europe. The consultation was arranged in two Rounds.
In the First Round the participants were invited to suggest the abilities and skills which future graduates would need, in order to be able to adapt themselves to change and to participate in managing change on behalf of society and within their own profession.
The respondents were also invited to suggest examples of educational interventions which would assist students to develop the related abilities or skills (Appendix I).
The Second Round invited the participants to suggest amendments and to add further proposals in relation to the collated responses from the First Round.
They were then asked to suggest how the proposed educational interventions might be accommodated within their existing, or parallel curricula.
Finally, the respondents were invited to consider reality by suggesting the conditions which would need to be satisfied, in order to ensure that so substantial a curricular change could be introduced and sustained successfully (Appendix II).
This pilot consultation addressed three further aspects in addition to the abilities and skill needed for adapting to, and participating in managing change. Interprofessional and intersectoral collaboration will call for familiarity with the professional environments, the ways of thinking and the languages of the other professions, and similarly the motivation and reactions of politicians and their public service colleagues. International collaboration will require an informed sensitivity of the different cultures and their respective history that enrich our world.
Lastly, there is the wide range of economic, environmental, geopolitical, sociological and other affects on the human condition which are the fundamental concern of this challenge (Appendix III). These will need to constitute the context in which the learning is to be grounded.
The Report of this Delphi Consultation may be accessed at: www.caipe.org.uk/publications.html
In 2001 the Secretary General and the Associate Secretary General signed A Proposal for an International Initiative by the Network: Community Partnerships for Health through Innovative Education, Service and Research: Adapting to Change and Participating in Managing Change - A Reform of Higher Professional Education.
Corresponding Author on Behalf of the Writing Group: Charles Engel, University of London Institute of Education, School of Lifelong Learning and International Development, UK
Email: engelcharles@tiscali.co.uk
October 2006
References
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Engel, CE (2000) Health professions education for adapting to change and for participating in change. Education for Change, 13(1), 37-43.
Engel, CE (2001) Towards a European approach to an enhanced education of the health professions in the 21st century
www.the-networktufh.org/publications_resources/furtherreading.asp#T
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