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Aims & Objectives
Structure
Holism
Informatics
Introduction to h2cm for Life-Long Learners: Part 2
A tool for 21st Century: Supporting lifelong learning
Learners, teachers and researchers need tools that can assist in making sense of an ever more complex world. h2cm is a tool that can assist in ways that can be explained by using a jigsaw analogy.
There is the jigsaw that is complete: predetermined in the curriculum. This jigsaw is then broken up and delivered to the students. If the curriculum provides the ideal, exemplary copy of the knowledge, skills and attitudes that students should cover and master then the teacher will have in their minds a copy of the curriculum that approximates to this ideal. They will likely possess parts of the curriculum in more detailed, specialist form. As a professional they will also recognise - ably assisted by students and peers - when a piece of their own jigsaw is incomplete or missing (lifelong learning again!).
Students attend classes not just to benefit from the traditional pedagogic transaction, but to benefit from their lecturer's organisation of knowledge. It is how the students organise this new knowledge (or skill) that is fundamental to learning outcomes, whether theoretical or practical. While teachers may already possess the majority of jigsaw pieces, over time the dimensions of pieces may change and the way the pieces link alter subtely or more radically. The complaint about trying to cram yet more into an already crowded curriculum is often heard. |
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In response teachers (indeed all of us) need to update our knowledge continuously. Meanwhile students must find the pieces of the jigsaw for themselves. Guided by their studies and possible experiential and life-experience they may call upon. |
The following list shows tasks that students and researchers often face:
- Planning a paper or essay.
- Outlining a case study.
- Planning a presentation.
- Providing an overview of a patient/clinical encounter.
- Formulating a research question.
- Planning a research proposal.
Faced with the above work, brainstorming is often employed to ensure coverage of all angles and to trigger and imbue the proceedings with creativity. Mature students and researchers may recall a series of TV programs in which Tony Buzan described his mind-maps, which are now realised in software applications as indicated in our links pages and several books. (More recently - summer 2004 - Buzan featured in a BBC program, when he worked with school children whose progress had to that point been problematic.)
There are, however, some major differences between h2cm and mind mapping, which are discussed in this blog post: News exclusive: Mind mapper is visited by guardian angel of Hodges' model.
The model supports self and directed learning, which can then be further extended from engagement with mentors, supervisors and peer group. This sharing will magnify your use of the hcm. Revealing gaps in your own knowledge and validate and affirm those areas in which you are competent and well-versed.
Educationally, the power of the hcm resides in its ability to perform, in the sense explained by Lessig (2002). Lessig refers to the open source code of internet HTML which performs by helping others to learn how to create web pages. (I learned BASIC and HTML in this way.) h2cm can potentially perform in a similar way.
'Caring' needs your help!
Our content emphasises the role of information communication technologies (ICT). This is not merely a matter of reflecting the information age, but the need to stress your role, indeed our collective role (as practitioners and taxpayers) to ensure that health, social care and the public have information systems that work for us. As western societies are realising technology can also support self-help, health promotion and community activisim. We need to have the 'highways' in place to ensure everyone has equal access.
Your understanding and ability to assess, evaluate and fully utilise new integrated health and social care information systems is crucial, if care services are to change positively and innovate. Informatics needs a place on your curriculum beyond the level of wordprocessing, spreadsheet, database and search strategies. An information systems 'solution' is not a solution until you (and the patients in our care) say it is. This means taking a constructive, but critical socio-technical approach. |
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In both private and public services there are two mountains to negotiate. One is called 'resources' the other 'attitude'. Your enthusiasm, thirst for knowledge and studies requires you to use ICT. At the same time on placements you cannot avoid NPfIT: the National Programme for IT (or your National equivalent).
Entering clinical practice at a time of great change - how are you to make sense of what is happening? Senior and more experienced colleagues will have positive and negative views, but which ones stand out overall? If negative attitudes are abroad, how can you respond to them? Vitally we need to listen to each other, and as fresh-faced learners (plus many experienced colleagues) you really can influence and make a difference in:
- clinical governance
- the look and feel of information systems
- service improvement
- change management
- patient care!
I repeatedly mention the fact that there is no overarching theory for health care communication (Pettegrew & Logan, 1987). Pettegrew and Logan prompted a paper that expanded this theme identifying the scope of information and communication in health care (Jones, 1996). A series of papers in the 2003 Yearbook of Medical Informatics, discuss the need for a core theory that underpins medical informatics (Talmon & Hasman, 2003), and improved understanding of the micro-macro scope of medical informatics amid 21st century globalisation (Kulikowski, 2003).
What does the lack of an overarching theory and evidence for a theoretical struggle in medical informatics indicate? Our struggle with ICT, and the relationship between the soft and hard sciences may be a sign of immaturity. As von Baeyer, (2003) explains our understanding of information as a concept may be at a similar point to that of energy in the 18th century. Is it any wonder we struggle. All toddlers tumble. Perhaps this is why the productivity paradox teases us so?
20th C. tool designed for 21st C. technology & problems
You may be able to appreciate from this introduction the potential of h2cm. Even if Brian's model cannot provide an off-the-shelf theory, it can furnish a net - a structure in which to catch the gamut of health, social and pastoral care phenomena. People are excellent problem solvers, especially when given the space and time to reflect and be creative. When solutions are found, it still surprises us that implementing them is almost as problematic as what we started with. The new millennium has brought home the problems of scale and complexity. Our problems are not just big, they are macro in scale and reflecting this theme I will list several:
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Back to you - my friend
P.S. Do not underestimate a grain of sand...
We need to model the issues above and recognise individual rights, concordance not just in health and social care interventions, but concordance in politics also. Crucially, the responsibilities of being a citizen must also be reinforced in lifelong education. The cost to all of needs fulfilled for the few. The h2cm should not be restricted to health and social care. Clinical and social care governance must be the keystone of global governance. The ubiquity of information provides the scope to not only think out of the box, but in it as well.
You may be asking could h2cm work in this global arena? There is already evidence that this is possible. Brainstorming is often employed to ensure coverage of all angles and to trigger and imbue the proceedings with creativity. Hodges' approach has much in common with Wilber’s (1996) four quadrants of development. In response I would like to venture that the two approaches are complementary rather than in competition. The existence of each supports and validates the other.
More than ever health, the environment and democracy are like pearls threaded on a fine cord called quality of life. If informatics can help integrate the vision and information is the clasp that unifies, what tools do we have to handle this most delicate operation?
Brian and I hope this page has introduced how h2cm relates to education. Brian and I would be very pleased to receive your feedback and hear from students, lecturers and researchers interested in contributing to this website. |
Thank you for your interest which is greatly appreciated.
Whether you are a student, mentor, Dean, lecturer,
or life-long learner, everybody needs:
help-2c-more - help-2-listen - help-2-care
Visit the blog -
Buzan, T. (2002) Mind Maps for Kids: An Introduction, How to Mind Map: The Ultimate Thinking Tool That Will Change Your Life, HarperCollins.
Buzan, T. (2003) Mind Maps for Kids: An Introduction, HarperCollins.
Lessig, L. (2002) The Future of Ideas, Vintage.
Jones, P. (1996) Do we Need an Overarching Theory of Health Communication?, Health Informatics, 2,1.
Kulikowski,C. (2003) The Micro-Macro Spectrum of Medical Informatics Challenges: From Molecular Medicine to Transforming Health Care in a Globalizing Society, Yearbook of Medical Informatics, Haux, R., Kulikowski,C. Eds. Schattauer - IMIA, 223-227.
Pettegrew, L.S., Logan, R. (1987) Health Care Contexts IN Handbook of Communication Science, Berger, C.R., Chaffee, S.H. (Eds.) Sage Publications Ltd, Chap. 22, 675.
Talmon, J.L., Hasman, A. (2003) Medical Informatics as a Discipline at the Beginning of the 21st Century, Yearbook of Medical Informatics, Haux, R., Kulikowski,C. Eds. Schattauer - IMIA, 211-214.
von Baeyer, H.C. (2003) Information: The New Language of Science, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Wilber, K. (1996) In Search of a System for Everything, A Brief History of Everything, Boston: Shambhala.
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Copyright © 2007 Peter Jones
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© 1998-2004 Health Career Model by Brian E Hodges.
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