TCU teams up with MCH board member for training strategies

Methodist Children’s Home (MCH) board member, Dr. Jeffrey Clark, recently found an opportunity to further support the children, youth and families of MCH by sharing his professional expertise.

Clark, a neurologist and director of the residency program at Scott and White Hospital in Temple, helps train medical professionals/physicians using a clinical teaching program developed at Stanford University. The program provides strategies for teaching complex concepts to students and residents who are in a clinical, non-classroom setting, such as at a teaching hospital where learners are involved in direct patient care.

“Physicians are not always taught to teach, but are often required to pass their knowledge on to students and resident physicians,” explained Clark. “This model provides structure that gives teaching faculty an organized and effective way to do so while taking care of patients.” 

  

Dr. Karyn Purvis of Texas Christian University’s Institute of Child Development recently made a presentation to the MCH Board of Directors on Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI), a model of care currently used at MCH that was designed for treating children and youth who have experienced relationship-based trauma. After the presentation, Purvis and Clark arranged a meeting to discuss the Stanford teaching model and how it could be helpful in training staff in TBRI.

“We wanted him to help us think about how we could revise our training so people could understand it at a different level,” Purvis said.

Clark presented the model to several MCH staff and representatives from TCU on April 22. In the Stanford teaching model, the curriculum includes seven educational categories that are taught through a combination of didactic presentations, group discussions, role-play exercises, video and setting of personal and institutional goals. During his presentation, he showed videos and led discussions on methods to improve the learning environment among other teaching methods.

Dr. David Cross, co-developer of TBRI, agreed that the Stanford teaching model could be an effective tool in communicating the curriculum for TBRI training.

“What was exciting about it was with TBRI, we’ve got a great model for content of trauma-informed care, but we didn’t really have a model in the formal sense for how you can train people and deliver that model to other people and organizations,” Cross said.

Purvis said what attracted them to the Stanford model is that it is interactive with no lecture and students have to be active participants. Through this collaboration between Clark, Purvis and Cross, TCU is currently revising some of their training to incorporate the Stanford model into the TBRI training process.

“TCU has decided to create learning objectives partly based upon the content and core skills of TBRI and partly based upon the different aspects of the Stanford model,” Cross explained. “It will help us see where the holes are and where we could do some things differently.