After a brief hiatus we are back with the latest installment of inQuiring Minds. We continue to expand our work in health care, where community health workers are now learning to teach patients to ask better questions and participate in decisions. Stay tuned to this blog for more updates about RQI’s work in health care and a summary of lessons we learned while presenting at the American Public Health Association conference. As we reach out to the health care field, it’s useful to hear how others are understanding and using the language of “patient engagement”:
● Dr. Leslie Kernisan critically analyzes the “buzz words” patient engagement by unpacking what the phrase could mean and what it should look like. At the heart of the work is communication and qualitative metrics for engagement. Kernisan writes: “Communication with patients is, of course, essential to all of this. This is why any innovation that improves a patient’s ability to access and communicate with healthcare providers is proudly labeled as “patient engagement.”
● As technology and resources rise there is a growing narrative around a self-advocating “ePatient.” In his post “Medicine X, Technology and Empowerment: e-Patients are Not Waiting,” Tom Workman shows how the demand for resources and care are changing how patients engage with physicians and the health care system. Workman notes, "as we design pathways and tools to engage patients, we must remember that we are not creating empowerment or engagement as gifts we give to all patients. In many ways, we are harnessing an energy that is manifesting around us, and often without us.”
The QFT continues to gain traction in the classroom setting, where teachers see it as a creative technique to develop students’ critical thinking skills:
● International School Teacher Maggie Hos-McGrane shares about our method in a blog entitled: The Question Formulation Technique, Design Thinking and the Inquiry Cycle. She writes: “It is suggested that fostering creativity involves planning for both divergent and convergent thinking and that metacognition, being able to reflect and think about your own thinking, is essential for learning. The QFT is a process for fostering these skills.”
● Looking for 12 Interesting Ways To Start Class Tomorrow? Terry Heick listed several creative and interesting ways to get your students going across various grade levels. One of the options, trying out an impromptu QFT.
● In the blogpost: Teaching Our Children to Think, Emily Klien offers perspective on how dialogue is “paramount to critical thinking.” She encourages parents and educators across the board to allow for their children to continue asking questions and to really release the reins on their critical thinking.
Have any interesting articles you think we should see? Are you blogging about the QFT or other Right Question Resources? Let us know! Be sure to LIKE us on Facebook and TWEET at us! #RightQuestion #RQI