Altruism remains the main motivator for Australia’s external healthcare educators involved in optometry and other clinical placements while competing work requirements and time constraints are the main barriers, according to a survey by researchers at Deakin University.
Researchers from the Victorian university’s schools of optometry, medicine, and medical imaging sent questionnaires to 849 educators. Of these 153 completed the part-one questionnaire and 142 part-two.
They wanted to gain insight into what motivates educators and what universities could do more of to harness that motivation and also remove barriers.
“As teaching models evolve and the number of medical and allied health students continues to rise, there is a growing demand for clinical placements,” their report said.
“To ensure healthcare programs remain sustainable and successful, it is essential to better understand and cultivate motivating factors that encourage external healthcare educators to engage in teaching.”
The survey results showed that, across all professions, altruism was the primary source of motivation for teaching in the university’s healthcare programs.
Medical imaging educators placed a higher value on career-related teaching aspects compared with those in medicine and optometry.
The resources and benefits associated with teaching were generally perceived to be of minimal importance.
Having a university email account was the least valued, with almost half reporting that they did not use their account. Library access was considered slightly more valuable than having an email account, but 54.9% reported having never accessed the library. While most commonly, university assistance with research was not considered important, there was some perceived value in having access to students’ online teaching resources, even though only 49.7% used this material.
On barriers, 41.3% of external healthcare educators reported that there were none to teaching, but 31.8% said increased workloads and time constraints were the most likely factors to affect teaching participation.
Information and technology requirements, income expectations, requirements of the onboarding HR process, and ongoing university compliance were considered relatively minor barriers.
The researchers said that gaining a clearer insight into the benefits and barriers associated with teaching was important to “help universities develop strategies that optimise or mitigate these factors”.
“This knowledge has the potential to further strengthen initiatives aimed at improving the recruitment and retention of external healthcare educators teaching in university curriculums,” the researchers said.
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