Developing patient-centred care in health professionals: reflections on introducing service-learning into the curriculum

Background: This paper examines how professionalism is fostered to promote ‘patient-centred care’ in UK healthcare education and identifies challenges reported by educators. It reports a pilot study which introduced ‘service-learning’ into the dental and physiotherapy curricula as a strategy for promoting pertinent professional values and skills. Content: Undergraduate dental, and pre-registration postgraduate physiotherapy, students experienced service-learning via attendance at non-professional community placements, such as organising social events with homeless people, as part of their programme of study. Pre-placement preparation and post-placement debrief were offered. Evaluation data were obtained through focus groups, questionnaires, and interviews from students, placement providers and academic staff. Although the intervention was generally well received, important limitations emerged revealing new insights into difficulties with this type of learning for students, placement providers and institutions. Conclusion: Service-learning shows potential for enhancing capability to deliver patient-centre care. Lessons learnt from this project may usefully inform curriculum development in healthcare education and open up further avenues for research.