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With the assistance of Larissa Predy, Gagun Cchina, Natasha Egele and Stacey Creak
Adolescents have problems with access to the health-care system, developing an independent relationship with a doctor and taking an active role in their health care. They find it difficult to talk (with a doctor) about sensitive issues such as sexual problems, emotional and mental well-being, or family problems, and they are concerned about confidentiality. These are observations from many reports and confirmed by our data from a needs assessment of high school students in Vancouver in 1999–2000.
University of British Columbia medical students have presented ‘Talk to Your Doc’ workshops in Vancouver high schools as a volunteer outreach since 1998. They show and talk about problems that arise from poor communication and engage the adolescents in small group discussions and role playing to address the five workshop objectives:
The Vancouver School Board considers the workshops a part of the curriculum to meet personal development objectives.
In the past 10 years 518 medical students have put on 188 workshops for 5005 high-school students in seven schools in Vancouver, two schools in Victoria and one school in Prince George, British Columbia.
A decade of ‘satisfaction’ reports says the workshops are popular with the adolescents, their teachers and the medical students. However, we have not had rigorous data to show the effect. This study used Kirkpatrick’s classic model for evaluating training programs (Kirkpatrick, 1996) to examine three levels of effect on the adolescent learners: reactions (their feelings about, and satisfaction with, the workshop), learning (knowledge acquired, skills improved or attitudes changed) and behaviour change (does the learning affect the way they behave when they subsequently visit a doctor?). We also repeated the needs assessment with Grade 9 students (toward the end of the school year) to check that the workshop objectives were still appropriate.
The results showed that the workshop objectives and content are relevant for Grade 9 students about to enter into Grade10. However, these students have hardly begun to think about making the transition to an independent relationship with the doctor. The emphasis of the workshops, key messages, and expected outcomes need to be modified to connect to this younger audience.
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