Research Ideas
Context of the Problem
I am broadly interested in how people solve problems, and in the design of problem-solving learning environments. More specifically, as an instructional designer at the UGA College of Pharmacy, I want to serve pharmacy students who are working hard to become effective problem solvers within their future field of practice. In pharmacy practice settings, employers expect new pharmacy graduates to possess a range of competencies, including strong clinical problem solving skills, which are the problem-solving skills related to caring for patients (Vlasses et al., 2013). In 2012, the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) highlighted clinical problem solving as one area needing greater attention in pharmacy education in order to prepare graduates for professional practice (Zellmer, Vlasses, & Beardsley, 2013). Although clinical problem solving is one of the essential competencies that all pharmacy students must develop in preparation for professional practice, there are few studies exploring the underlying thinking processes and decision making that pharmacists use to solve problems in real-world settings. If we want to create opportunities for rich and meaningful learning experiences for students in any field of study, we should identify and investigate the problems that practitioners from that field of study solve (Jonassen, 1999).
Goals of the Research Agenda
The goal of my current research agenda is to develop a foundation for the design of problem-solving simulations for pharmacy students by inquiring into the nature of pharmacists’ problem-solving experiences in real-world practice. I have identified a field of study known as naturalistic decision making research, and a cognitive task analysis approach called the critical decision method that I will use to support my scholarship.
Naturalistic Decision Making
One way to study pharmacists everyday problem solving is by investigating their naturalistic decision making (NDM), defined as the study of how people use their experience to make decisions in real-world settings (Klein, 1997). The NDM framework was designed to examine the strategies people use in performing complex, uncertain, high stakes tasks, often in fast-paced environments (Klein, 1997), and has also been successful in analyzing decision making during less complex, routine situations (Klein, 1998).
Critical Decision Method
Cognitive task analysis (CTA) is a class of methods used to unpack information about knowledge and thought processes that underlie task performance (Wong, 2004). The Critical Decision Method (CDM) is a type of CTA used in many NDM studies. CDM was developed to elicit experts’ decision strategies and knowledge requirements through probing actual incidents that involved decision making in naturalistic environments (Klein, Calderwood, & MacGregor, 1989). CDM allows researchers to capture the thinking of interviewees by having them tell stories of their experience of important incidents, which are then subdivided according to key events and segments. Once the details and timelines of the stories are established, the interviewees are questioned again, one story segment at a time, in order to better understand the strategies and thinking behind their decisions and actions (Crandall, Klein, & Hoffman, 2006).
Research Projects-Trajectory
Using the critical decision method, I will conduct an initial qualitative study to identify themes related to pharmacists’ naturalistic decision making. I hope to then be able to contextualize my findings within an existing pharmacy problem solving model known as the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process (PPCP), which was recently designed as a general heuristic for approaching pharmacy problems across the profession, but is not grounded in the study of actual practitioners from the field. Further, after studying the naturalistic decision making that comprises pharmacists’ problem solving, I hope to use the already collected data in an additional study aimed at characterizing pharmacy problems according to a framework developed by Jonassen, who suggested that problems may differ according to their structuredness, context, complexity, dynamicity, and domain specificity (Jonassen, 2011).
Research Questions
Based on the research agenda described above, I have the following specific research questions:
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How do pharmacists make clinical decisions during critical incidents encountered in ambulatory and hospital practice settings?
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What is the relationship between pharmacists’ clinical decision making and the JCPP PPCP?
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How can clinical decision making problems in pharmacy practice be characterized based on Jonassen’s (2011) criteria?
Relevance/Implications
In order to design effective training for pharmacy students, we must account for the real-world experience and decision-making of practitioners in the field as a starting point for considering how to develop authentic, relevant learning activities situated in contexts that are reflective of real world practice (Cohen, Freeman, & Thompson, 1997). The agenda described above will represent a first step, leading the way towards a foundation for understanding the decision making processes that pharmacy students must develop, and laying the groundwork for instructional design recommendations for problem-solving learning environments in pharmacy education.
References
Cohen, M. S., Freeman, J. T., & Thompson, B. B. (1997). Training the naturalistic decision maker. In C. E. Zsambok & G. A. Klein (Eds.), Naturalistic decision making (pp. 257-268). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Crandall, B., Klein, G. A., & Hoffman, R. R. (2006). Working minds: a practitioner's guide to cognitive task analysis. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.
Jonassen, D. (1999). Designing constructivist learning environments. In C. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory (pp. 215-239). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Jonassen, D. H. (2011). Learning to solve problems : a handbook for designing problem-solving learning environments. New York, NY : Routledge.
Klein, G. (1997). Developing expertise in decision making. Thinking & Reasoning, 3(4), 337-352.
Klein, G. (1998). Sources of power : how people make decisions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Klein, G., Calderwood, R., & MacGregor, D. (1989). Critical decision method for eliciting knowledge. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, & Cybernetics, 19(3), 462-472.
Vlasses, P. H., Patel, N., Rouse, M. J., Ray, M. D., Smith, G. H., & Beardsley, R. S. (2013). Employer expectations of new pharmacy graduates: Implications for the pharmacy degree accreditation standards. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 77(3), 1-10.
Wong, B. L. W. (2004). Critical decision method data analysis. In D. Diaper & N. A. Stanton (Eds.), The handbook of task analysis for human-computer interaction (pp. 327-346). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Zellmer, W. A., Vlasses, P. H., & Beardsley, R. S. (2013). Summary of the ACPE consensus conference on advancing quality in pharmacy education. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 77(3), 1-10.