Transcript
Melanie Barlow: right, welcome everyone to another episode of Simulation Happy Hour. And today we're thrilled to be joined by Narelle D'Alwood, who's a senior lecturer in physiotherapy at Monash University.
Jenny: you
Melanie Barlow: And I had the fortune of meeting Narelle when she presented her work at the ACU Sim Showcase last year. So welcome.
Narelle: Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody.
Melanie Barlow: and joined by Jenny and Jane. Hi, morning guys.
Jane Frost: Hi.
Melanie Barlow: Excellent. So Noah, can you just tell us a little bit about your research?
Narelle: Yes, absolutely. And if I may, I might start by telling you about my key educational focus, which will then explain my research focus. So I am the neurology team lead at Monash Physiotherapy, but I also run the peer simulation program there. And my key educational focus is has always been preparing students for clinical placement.
Narelle: On clinical reality, whatever that looks like. So to that end, I have developed and run a peer simulation program, which is where we actually train or if we like educate students to portray the patient role for each other during simulation in a sort of similar way that you would train educate a you know an actor to portray a role. So it's quite different to role play. So my research interests and focus is really about peer simulation because there's there's a lot of gaps in the evidence around peer simulation and around this this principle, if you like, of really preparing and educating students to prepare to portray the patient role.
Narelle: So today what we're talking about is we did a piece of work looking specifically at cold students, so those who identify as coming from a culturally and linguistically diverse background, and what their experiences of our peer simulation program are.
Jenny: Nice. Thanks, Narelle. So what motivated you to explore the COLD students' experience with peer simulations specifically?
Narelle: I've also, so one of my co-authors Dr Sharon Yahalom works for the COPE unit. So the COPE unit it sits in our faculty and it's a unit that
Jenny: to show you a little bit. So I'm going to show you a little bit more about the future.
Narelle: So the people who work in it are educators, linguists, communication specialists and their their aim is to support students in developing their communication skills.
Jenny: So I'm going to show you little bit more about the future.
Narelle: So that unit isn't just for international students, it's for any any students who feel that they might need some more support in their communication and interpersonal skills. So chatting away with Sharon one day and really talking about this gap.
Narelle: As I said, there's a lot of gaps in the research around peer simulation. There's lots to explore. But this was certainly one area that fitted really well with the fact that we do have a significant international student cohort that we are asking all of our students to portray dual roles of students.
Narelle: practicing to be the physio during simulation, but also portraying that patient role, which adds a whole other level of complexity to what we're asking the students to do. So yeah, that was essentially, you know, we didn't know if the experience of peer simulation was different for culturally and linguistically diverse students compared to our domestic students.
Jane Frost: Thanks, Norelle. That leads perfectly into my question. What aspects of peer simulation did COLD students find most challenging?
Narelle: Perhaps not unexpectedly, it was the communication aspect. So it was, so let me just set the scene for you in during our peer simulation program in our Bachelor of Physiotherapy, it runs over nine weeks. We do two cases every week And each case, you know, will be a one-on-one patient interaction that goes for about 50 minutes.
Narelle: And e the cases are across a spread of musculoskeletal, neurocardiosis, more complex sort of mixed cases. So over the course of a semester, and the students do this in their preclinical semester, the students will actually participate in, as a patient and as a physio, in 18 different cases.
Narelle: So going back to your question, throughout that sort of semester, that nine week semester, what they do find challenging or what they reported finding challenging was that communication aspect.
Jane Frost: to
Narelle: So when they're portraying the physiotherapist role, being able to think about what they want to say to their patient, obviously in their own language and then translating it and saying, you know how do I say that in English?
Narelle: And then we spend the next sort of pre the preclinical semester saying, no, you can't use jargon. You know, you need to, a patient won't understand if you say the word, you know, hemiplegia or So, though you know, practising those communication skills and doing it, I think this is important, doing it in front of peers, you know, is quite challenging for our students from a culturally linguistically diverse background. But they, you know, the general theme from the participants in our study was that it was challenging, but
Narelle: it was going to be, they knew it was going to be challenging in clinical placement, so they found it a really good opportunity to practice those skills.
Jane Frost: Great, thanks. You've kind of answered my next question, my next question is, how did peer simulation support the development of communication skills and readiness for clinical practice?
Narelle: In lots of ways. so because the whole program is sort of multifactorial, so for example, because they're doing 18 patient, you know individual one-on-one patient cases over the nine weeks, they get the opportunity to step into that physiotherapist role a number of times throughout the semester. So when they're portraying the physiotherapist, they obviously get that practice in communication.
Narelle: But then on the flip side, they also get that practice when they're portraying the the patient role for their colleague, A, they get to sort of figuratively step into the patient's shoes for a little while while they're portraying the patient role.
Narelle: But they also get to observe while they're the patient their colleague's communication style and how their colleague who is portraying the physio role how they interact with them and what they're saying and the sort of terminology that they use. So over those nine weeks, students will work with different people all the time. So it's very random. Once we start the simulation, we try and replicate a clinical environment as much as possible.
Narelle: So trying to set the scene for you as a simulation starting, we might have you know our seven patients in the room awaiting their physiotherapist's arrival. As the physiotherapist come to the door, we as I said, it's pretty random. We say, right, you're going to see the patient in bed one, you're going to see the patient in bed two, you're going to see the patient in bed three. So they're not working with the same people all the time, which they often tend to do in prac classes, as much as we try and encourage them to work with different people. So I think that opportunity to watch and learn from
Narelle: Other colleagues, and that might be, you know, that might be people who are also from a culturally and linguistically diverse background, or it might be our domestic students. So they get to see a real range of communication styles and interpersonal styles.
Narelle: The other thing that happens during peer simulation is in the room, we have people portraying the role of clinical supervisors. So this might be me, you know, someone like me, like academics from the university, Often we actually have people from our clinical partners, actual what we call real clinical supervisors who come in for the day. and then also we, and this is also a really valuable part of the program, we have our senior students come in to portray the role of clinical supervisors.
Narelle: And this again might be senior students from a culturally and linguistically diverse background. So again, they're fantastic at providing feedback to the students as well about their you know communication skills, what they need to know on placement, what's it what's it really like on placement. So some of those conversations often happen outside of the peer simulation session because we're very careful within the peer simulation session that they actually actually are enrolled as a clinical supervisor and interacting with the students exactly as as a clinical supervisor would on placement.
Jane Frost: That sounds amazing. So in your in your research, the students have described the peer simulation as both stressful but also safe.
Jane Frost: So how do you explain that balance?
Narelle: It's a great question and, you know, importantly, I think something to point out at this point is this wasn't, or well, the the participants in our study didn't feel that this particular feeling was really that different from anyone who participates in peer simulation. So I guess, you know, thinking about peer simulation, the way we have set it up, it's a really safe space to learn. they're not The students aren't assessed on their simulation. i mean, you could argue that they are, but that's in an OSCE at the end of the unit. And that's not just assessing what they've done in simulation, it's assessing sort of everything they've learned in the particular unit. So the way I like, you know, the way that I think about it is that in our program, we're trying to replicate clinical reality as much as we can within our physiotherapy department.
Narelle: And clinical reality is stressful. you know, it is, students will feel really nervous when they go out onto clinical placement and it is a stressful, you know, it's a whole other level of stress compared to peer simulation. So, and that was always part of my focus when developing the program. It's like students will be stressed. This is a stressful situation when you're working with real patients in real teams, in real health facilities. And how can we sort of replicate that a little bit on campus? So that I think is where the stress comes from, is from, o this is real. I've got a clinical supervisor that I'm handing over to or he's asking me questions about what I'm doing. I've got a patient in front of me that I'm actually having to pull all my knowledge and skills together. I'm being watched all the time. You know, there's these clinical supervisors in the room who are watching everything I do. i think it's stressful actually having the...
Narelle: you know, and it's a fellow student who's your patient. So if you're not feeling very confident in your skills, you've also got that added thing of, oh, this fellow student is actually, is just seeing the fact that I forgot to take their socks off before I walked, for example.
Narelle: But there is inherent safety built in it. As I said, we are very clear with our students that peer simulation is a really valuable opportunity to learn. We are not assessing you. They get feedback. It's a very supportive environment. We of course have a debrief at the end of every session.
Narelle: So I think, you know, they do feel like it's a safe space to learn and they do understand that, although it is stressful and and you feel really nervous, that's actually what I'm going to feel like on clinical placement. And one of the many benefits is how do I manage that sense of nervousness and and sit with that uncertainty and ambiguity and I'm not quite sure what to do here in a safe way.
Narelle: That was a pretty long answer to your question. I hope i i hope that answers your question.
Jane Frost: Yeah, that was really good. Thank you.
Jane Frost: Mel, I think I'm handing to you.
Melanie Barlow: Now, before I jump to the next question, I just, yeah, I just want to,
Melanie Barlow: I just want to ask, you've got students, you've got clinical supervisors who are clinical, you've got senior students coming in logistically.
Melanie Barlow: What an amazing thing you've achieved. Like, how did you do that?
Narelle: Over 10 years. So this is the 10th year that we've been we've been running the program.
Melanie Barlow: Okay. So time and
Narelle: i Can I tell you a bit of history? Because I will be veering off a li If I tell you a little bit of history about how it started, sort of will be veering off a little bit from this key research.
Melanie Barlow: Yeah.
Melanie Barlow: Yeah, please.
Narelle: Is that okay?
Narelle: So,
Melanie Barlow: Yeah, because listeners will want to know.
Narelle: okay. So in 2014,
Narelle: we I was talking to the unit coordinator of of this pre-clinical unit that we run in the Bachelor of Physiotherapy program. And I can't remember why, it's a long time ago, but there was this sort of four-hour gap in the curriculum that the unit coordinator said to me, do you want to something? do you want to something sort of neuro in this four-hour gap? I'm like, sure, what would you like me to do?
Narelle: in Anyway, short story is, and this is full disclosure, everybody, I didn't even know what simulation was back then, but I was still working clinically, so sort of half clinical, half academic. And I said, wouldn't it be great if we could set up a scenario whereby the students actually have to, like, treat a real patient? And that was the start of it. So we went across to the nursing labs. We wrote a couple of cases. Both cases are actually still in use now, all these years later. You know, we had attachments, we had real hospital beds. where you know it was It was a sim lab.
Narelle: And i so it's burnt into my memory. I still remember walking. you So the simulation started and I had students, a number of students in tears, shaking,
Narelle: like just so incredibly overwhelmed with what we were asking them to do.
Melanie Barlow: Wow.
Narelle: And these were students who were about to go onto placement into in like three or four weeks time. So that, it was a real light bulb moment. It's like, oh, okay, there's really something here that we're not bridging the gap enough between what they're learning on campus and what they need to do on clinical placement. So that was the genesis of the program. And literally, the unit coordinator, Professor Steve Maloney, was amazing. And he just said, right, we are onto something. you have you now have four hours every week, you know, from in in in ensuing years. And we just ran with it.
Narelle: So it's a really key plank of both our Bachelor of Physiotherapy and Doctor of Physiotherapy program. And the feedback that we get from the students is amazing. Going back to your logistics, one of the key things is,
Narelle: you've always got the right amount of patients. And, you know, because it's so, you know, if you've got 40 students, you've instantly got 20 physios and 20 patients. If you've got 80 students, you've got 40 physios and 40 patients. Rooms are obviously an issue, but, you know, that's always an issue, whether you're doing prac classes or simulation, booking enough rooms for everybody.
Narelle: the The educators, I think, Everyone over the 10 years has really, I mean, the the program has really developed and grown over time, but everyone really sees the benefit of it.
Narelle: And they'd like, you know, lots of the academics love stepping back into the clinical supervisor role. and So it's a really nice way to work with your students in in different ways, rather than sort of a standard like class or tutes or lectures or whatever.
Narelle: and And then the senior students, it's just become its own, like it's sort of self-perpetuating. The students really value peer simulation and though I think they value it even more once they go out onto placement. So in terms of our Bachelor program, it's the fourth or final year students who are coming back to portray the role of clinical supervisor.
Narelle: And one of the wonderful benefits is they learn stepping into the role of a clinical supervisor. they sat And these are students who haven't haven't done all of their clinical placements yet. So there's so much learning in that role as well.
Narelle: Sorry, I'm actually segueing off the logistics, but you know we often have the senior students oh, now I can see why it's so hard, you know, why a clinical supervisor finds it hard to really understand my clinical reasoning. You know, if I'm really waffly and not being really concise, like they can see that because they're stepping into the shoes of the clinical supervisor. We now just use standard prac rooms. We don't have simulation lab facilities in physiotherapy at Monash. So we just use a standard prac
Narelle: room And then we just set it up, you know, if it's an inpatient person, we just get out our white gowns and our blankets and, you know, IV poles if we need them or catheters. If it's an outpatient, we set it up like an outpatient waiting room. So out the actual fidelity, if you like, of the physical environment itself.
Narelle: just looks like a standard prac room, really. so we're really asking our students to to suspend disbelief and buy in And if everyone is trained and educated in their actual roles and stays in character, it's gold.
Narelle: It's absolutely gold.
Melanie Barlow: Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of authenticity in how you've set it up. You don't need all the fancy equipment.
Narelle: No, there are, know yeah, exactly, exactly.
Melanie Barlow: Excellent.
Narelle: exactly
Melanie Barlow: All right, I'll get back on track. I just really wanted to know because, yeah, what a great what a great activity. So i guess with peer simulation and the cold students,
Melanie Barlow: How did the the simulation help students navigate that social, cultural and linguistic challenges? I know you've touched on this, but specifically for them.
Narelle: Yeah. So A, I think it's dosage in physiotherapy speak. So it's the ability to practise a lot.
Narelle: You know, it's not just a one-off, you know, you're you're doing a prac and, and with you know, practising, working with a person with a stroke, for example.
Melanie Barlow: Mm.
Narelle: It is, you know, four hours every week. you They are practising those skills in a sort of realistic environment. I, you know, as I've touched on so...
Narelle: the dual roles. So practicing communication as a physiotherapist is really valuable for them. be But also being in that patient role, as I was saying earlier and and listening and and, you know, determining how their colleagues are communicating and that can be positive and negative too. You know, they sitting in the patient role, you go,
Narelle: didnt and this isn't specific to cultural and culturally and linguistically diverse students, but, you know, those who are sitting in the patient role might be sitting there going, ooh, that was a lengthy explanation. I think as a patient I really wouldn't have understood much after, you know, the first few words. So really do think there's a lot of value in that patient role for for all students but specifically for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Interestingly, something that didn't come up in this particular research, which I found interesting, was sort of the cultural differences and the cultural challenge of portraying a patient role. That that didn't really come up.
Narelle: I thought that students from a culturally and linguistically diverse background, you know, culturally to actually step into a patient role and pretend to be someone else and and get learning from that,
Narelle: might have sort of added challenges from a cultural background and and how they're used to learning, but that didn't really come up, which is I found really interesting. The other way in terms of with the cold students navigating those challenges is again that opportunity to interact with clinical supervisors and, you know, practice their interpersonal skills and their communication skills specifically with supervisors and, you know, saying seeing communication modelled in lots of different ways during the simulation I think is really helpful.
Narelle: Again, I'm not sure that any of that is really specific to culturally and linguistically diverse students because I think all students benefit from that. But that was something that that did certainly come up in the research.
Melanie Barlow: Very good, thank you. So what practical changes can then the educators do to make the support for COLE students better during simulation activities.
Narelle: So I think my... I actually haven't made any specific changes to our program based on these results. I haven't, there wasn't anything really glaring that I thought, oh, they need more preparation time or or they need sort of a a, you know, to be preparing separately in a room because of the extra challenges. that You know, there wasn't enough time.
Narelle: in the research, in the data for me to actually think, oh, I think we need to do things differently for people who are culturally and linguistically diverse. So i think
Narelle: I will, you know, one of the things I've been thinking of is, you know, do I release the patient information a little bit earlier to people from a culturally and linguistically diverse background? But i' not I'm not sure. So in terms of preparing for the patient role, for example, again, just to give you a bit of background, we the students get about 30 to 40 minutes to prepare for the patient role.
Narelle: And that happens on campus just before the simulation is about to start at the same time as the physios are preparing for the interaction. So potentially, depending on your cohort, you could give, you know, any student, obviously not just cold students, but any student who feels like, oh it's just not enough time. I'm not getting through the material. I'm watching the, we have little preparatory videos and and scripts and things. So certainly offering the opportunity to any student who feels that they need some more support with their communication to go through those materials is something to consider. I said, I haven't done that because it it I don't think the data is strong enough in this particular study and I certainly haven't had feedback from our students about that.
Narelle: I think... making ensuring that those who are portraying the clinical supervisor role are aware of potential challenge you know students who have challenges with their communication, again, not just cold students, and maybe you know going out of their way to actually interact with them as during the simulation as a clinical supervisor to get as much experience as they can with that communication. I think debrief is really important. So, you know, obviously debrief is very important, but making sure that when you come in to debrief, your whole group debrief, that those from a culturally and linguistically diverse background aren't all sitting together. And we know that they they often like to, they're often a friendship group, they share similar experiences, so they often do gravitate together as do other groups of students. So really making sure that we're mixing it up in debrief so that students are reflecting with students from, you know, that they may not necessarily normally work with.
Jenny: I'm going to ahead and see if can.
Narelle: And so, you know, I think that's a really important part of it. And and as I said, that, as I talked about earlier, the sort of randomisation of who you're working with on any given day is really important.
Melanie Barlow: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Narelle: So again, it's not a choose your own adventure, it's not a choose your own patient, because understandably, if you got to choose your own patient, I'd choose a friend.
Melanie Barlow: Mm-hmm.
Narelle: And so we're trying to obviously avoid that. So I think that's another sort of design feature that's important as well.
Jenny: Thanks, Narelle. That's really interesting. So when you said that the students get the the script to play the role 30 minutes before, is that within that four hours or is there, how does the timing of all that, all the students arrive together?
Jenny: Can you just give us a little outrun?
Narelle: Yeah, so they all... Yeah, sure. So they all arrive at the same time. We now use a QR code system to alter...
Narelle: So that literally the students come in, they scan their QR code, they put their student number in and they will get a... site They're just randomised into physio or patient role first.
Narelle: So it's always, so it's lovely. So in the old days before QR codes, we used to actually, you'd be, fit you know, we used to allocate them before the day, but then, you know, people wouldn't, there'd be people who are absent and people are like, oh, I actually haven't got a patient.
Jenny: so
Narelle: So QR code on the day, randomized into who's going to pay the physio first and who's going to portray the patient first. For that first sort of 30 40 minutes,
Narelle: The physio, so you know if you're the physio, you go down to whatever room and they open up the patient notes, whatever that might be. It might be a you know a referral for a musk patient in an outpatient setting. It might be a reams of notes for someone, you know a person with a stroke who's in rehab. So it differs depending on the case. So student physios will go down and start preparing for their interaction.
Narelle: The students who are portraying the patient role will go into different rooms and normally spread out around a bunch of rooms. They open up their laptops. There's a what we call a Moodle book, like an e-book, which has, you know, an outline of the patient, you know, past history, a history of present condition, you know, a bit of a script, you know, how they're going to respond in the interview. We have very sort of set headings, you know, how you talk, how you move, how you respond to the physiotherapist sort of questions or, you know, techniques, for example.
Jenny: you
Narelle: We have little video snippets of how the ph sorry of how the patient will move. So for example, you know last week we did some falls in balance and it was someone post-op after a laminectomy. So we had a video of someone sort of moving around in bed, very stiff, were lots of groaning, they had a lot of pain. And so we have little video snippets. while the those patients are preparing there are tutors in the room actually you know a encouraging them to get moving open your laptop and get started it usually takes them probably 10 to 15 minutes to go through all the material on the laptop and then it's rehearsal time then it's like right get up into the let's all come to the middle of the room so it might be seven patients with usually a clinical educator and a senior student and then they actually start practicing so they go around they practice their interview so first of all we go around and sort of and this is very similar to the principles of training are or educating an actor for simulated patients and I've based this on Deborah Nestle's work so first of all going around you know in third person who is this person you know What's their name? How old are they? Why have they come to hospital or why have they come to outpatients? What's their key problem? Blah, blah, blah. And then we, and it's all a bit fast tracked because we've only got 30 to 40 minutes. Then we go into, okay, now you're going to answer in character.
Narelle: Then they start practising the physical movement and rehearsing and they give feedback to each other. The tutors obviously give feedback. So that's pretty much how the preparation works. And then it's all pretty fast track. They then have to get, you know, if we're using costumes, sometimes we use masks to conceal identity. So sometimes we use sort of full face masks. If the case is is someone, is an older person, we've got some older people masks. so Sometimes, you know, we might use moulage if there's bruising or something on a shoulder, we'll get out the eye shadow. So that's when all of that happens.
Narelle: And then, okay, so that's half an hour. Then we have an hour interaction. So the actual simulation goes for an hour. But that includes a 10 minute sort of feedback time at the end where the patient can de-roll and provide feedback to their colleague.
Narelle: Then we rinse and repeat. We do it all again for the second case. So, you know, hour and a half essentially for each case, including preparation time. Then we have a little bit of break. Then we do our one hour debrief as a whole cohort.
Jenny: Wow, that's a whole heap of logistics, isn't it?
Narelle: Yeah, and it is, but once it's up and running, once you've got it up and running, it's it tends to take on a life of its own and it it works really well.
Jenny: Thanks for sharing the practicality of... rolling out simulation programs. Really appreciate that.
Narelle: Very happy to share with anyone who's listening.
Jenny: you
Narelle: I'm fairly passionate about piercing as you can probably tell.
Jenny: I think it's the passion that that drives the research and and gets us through all those nuances, isn't it? so
Narelle: Absolutely.
Jenny: you've You've talked to us about what you did find in your research, but what questions remain unanswered for you and where would you like to see future research focus?
Narelle: Oh, I have so many questions. I think what questions? right there are There are a lot of gaps. you know there I know that lots of people are, when they're doing simulation, lots of people have students portray the patient role. I'm not sure how many, and is it this would actually be a good research question, how many students,
Narelle: universities around Australia are actually using working with peer simulation in a way where the students are actually educated to portray the patient role rather than a sort of role play so that actually would be a very good research project that would be you know sort of mapping those activities of students portraying the patient role across the across the nation I am very interested So with some of our newer cases that we've developed, so interestingly we have just developed a women's health case, we developed a new case of someone with dementia last year or the year before, and with both of those cases we had consumer input, we had people with lived experience input.
Narelle: the Historic cases that we've been using for long a longer time haven't had consumer input, so that's certainly something that I'd like to research more and and actually have a team of people with lived experience.
Narelle: I would also love to have – I'm giving away all my research ideas.
Jenny: So, I think that's a good thing.
Narelle: I'd love to have people with lived experience actually come and help educate the students on how to portray the patient role and do some research around that.
Jenny: I think that's a good thing. I think that's good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.
Narelle: And I'm very interested in the, you know, sort of, I know anecdotally the perceptions of our clinical partners who come in to be clinical supervisors and our senior students, but we're actually looking at that now.
Jenny: I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.
Narelle: That's part of a new research project that we're doing, running some focus groups and interviews to gather data on the perceptions of those who come in to actually be our clinical supervisors during the same.
Jenny: Thank you.
Narelle: But yeah I mean, that's just a little taster. There are lots of questions that could be answered. My big one, which I would love to do, but I'm not sure if I ever will, is comparing outcomes between, you know, sort of the the design that we have in peer simulation and then actually working with an actor.
Jenny: We need to move forward and move forward.
Jenny: We need to move forward.
Narelle: My sense is that, i would you know, i would love to work with actors every single time we did simulation. I think that's absolutely the gold standard.
Jenny: We need to move forward.
Narelle: They're amazing at what they do and they so add so much value.
Jenny: We need to move forward.
Narelle: But pragmatically, you know, certainly it's just not something that we can do on a repeated basis. So for us to, again, I'm segwaying off your question, but for us to actually have simulated patients come in
Jenny: Thanks.
Narelle: that allowed one-on-ones, you know, interactions for 18 cases, we just couldn't do it. So i'm very aware of the limitations of peer simulation, that it is not the same as working with, you know, a professional actor in that role. And I'm also very aware that there are certain cases and scenarios that I would never ask a student to portray. so When I say that, you know, comparison between simulator patients and and students portraying the patient role, I would be very interested in students' perceptions about that, about the value of each.
Narelle: And then perhaps, you know, you could we could create a bit more of a hybrid model than what we've got at the moment. don't know, food for thought.
Jenny: The sky's the limit.
Narelle: Yes, it is, absolutely.
Jenny: It's interesting, isn't it, when you do one little piece of research, it always raises more questions than than you may have time to to answer.
Narelle: Yeah, that's exactly right, Jane. Jenny, sorry. I said the wrong word, sorry.
Jenny: No, you're all right. thing Thanks, Narelle. Jane or Mel, have you got any other questions that have arisen out of Narelle's interesting research?
Melanie Barlow: No, one question though, have you written any of it up in any research papers?
Narelle: The culturally linguistically diverse piece of research, no, it's been presented as a poster at a couple of corner couple of conferences, but I actually haven't written this up.
Narelle: Thanks for pointing that out, Mel.
Melanie Barlow: Okay.
Jenny: Thank you.
Narelle: So yeah, that definitely.
Melanie Barlow: No, I just want to direct people if there's anything out there.
Narelle: so I, yeah, no, what they can be directed to, which is not related to culturally and linguistically diverse students, is my randomized controlled, trial well it's a mixed methods study, randomized controlled trial with focus groups as well, looking at two different methods of educating students to portray the patient role.
Narelle: So it's published in Medical Teacher, it's published just last last year, yes, 2025.
Melanie Barlow: Nice. Yes.
Narelle: In fact, I think it ended up officially at the start of 2026 and it's called, acting it out really makes it stick in your brain. educating students for patient portrayal. So that, you know, that might be something of interest to your listeners as well, because it it drills down more into how do you prepare students to portray the patient role, you know all students, obviously.
Melanie Barlow: Okay.
Jenny: Thanks, Narelle.
Narelle: Pleasure.
Jenny: Now, Narelle, we finish all of our interviews with the with the yeah most interesting question of if you could be happy hour anywhere in the world, where would you be and what might you be sipping or drinking in that location?
Narelle: Great question. I have so many locations, but I'm going to go with something that's, you know, happening right now. I'd be in Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games, you know, watching everyone doing their amazing things. In Glasgow, probably I should be drinking, you know, a fine ale of some description, but I wouldn't veer too far from my lane and I'd probably actually just be drinking a glass of Chardonnay.
Narelle: and cheering on the Aussie team madly. Yeah, that's where I'd be right now.
Melanie Barlow: Brilliant. That would be fun.
Jenny: hmm
Melanie Barlow: Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining us. That's fabulous work and you've been very generous in sharing how you run it. So thank you so much.
Narelle: Thank you. And i you know, to all of your listeners, I am, very happy to share. we We've had a lot of learnings over the past 10 years. and And I probably haven't, you know, really portrayed this enough, but it really is a team effort. that The amazing team at Monash Physio have really gotten behind this and it's taken on on a life of its own. And I just think the value for students is is enormous. So I'm always very, very happy to share ideas, collaborate, do research together, with any of your listeners if they're interested.
Melanie Barlow: amazing. Thank you so much. All right. See you next time.
Narelle: Bye, Dean. Great to meet you.
Jane Frost: Thank you. Thanks.
Narelle: See you, Jane. See you, Jenny. Bye, Mel.
Jenny: Bye.
Jane Frost: Bye.
