#teach empathy

[dogwooddivinity]

save the boys, save the world

I got a pretty offensive anon ask today about why I seem to care so much about the needs of men and very little about the needs of women. I'm not sharing it here because I won't have that language under my name even if it's not mine. The gist of the argument was that women are the victims (we'll come back to that) and therefore should be the ones getting help. As someone who lived as a victim of a man for many many years, I want to make my case.

I was, my siblings were, my mothers were, victims and we did deserve help. We still deserve help, because we are still the women he built, still recovering to this day. But I would argue that if someone had taken the time to help him, we would never have needed to be helped in the first place.

What my father needed, what so many men need, is a world in which men are allowed to, and taught to, express their feelings in constructive ways. They need to be given the skills and freedom to say this hurts, I'm hurting, I'm angry or I'm sad and I don't know what to do with it. They need to grow up in a world where men cry not just because they are overwhelmed, but also because some things are just too beautiful. They need concrete lessons in empathy and encouragement to use it. They need to be allowed to fail and start over without shame. They need to be able to dress/be/love however they like without being seen as somehow less.

I'm never going to stop yelling about the needs of boys and men because we are failing them and it hurts us all. Do I think women deserve help? Are you kidding me? I'm a survivor of domestic assault who worked with victims of domestic assault for years. I think women deserve the world for carrying the burdens we've been handed, but every time someone says "boys will be boys" they undo my work and that makes me livid.

If you really want to help the little girl I used to be, teach boys to love. Teach them that emotions are messy and difficult and natural. Teach them that there are infinite ways to be a man and that all of them are equally valid. Love boys. Love men. Love them without condition. The best ones I know are fighting everyday against the expectations we've put on them and without our support, we're going to continue to feel the fallout. We helped build the men who hurt us and I, for one, think it's time to stop.

[leetrevenaphd]

search strategy

VR technology, as an empathy enhancement tool, is being studied in different disciplines and contexts. For this reason, it is important to consider this in the scoping review search strategy. It is an emerging technology; therefore, it is important to know how users are being impacted, as well as, to understand the facilitators, and / or barriers to the framework’s success.  

[leetrevenaphd]

Review - Using virtual reality in medical education to teach empathy

Admittedly, my early posts tend to focus on empathy and what empathy means. This is of course by design. As I see it, before understanding how virtual reality (VR) technology can be used to enhanced empathy, the notion of empathy first needs to be understood. In many ways, this understanding will help me determine how to best design a framework that will incorporate pre – and post-assessments, as well as VR technology.

To date, I have reviewed several different papers and found that there have been case studies that have adopted the pre and post assessment phases in the design of their VR empathy enhancement framework.  

One example of this is a 2018 paper by Dyer, Swartzlander, & Gugliucci, titled, ‘Using virtual reality in medical education to teach empathy. ‘

The authors objective was to use virtual reality (VR) technology to teach students in the health and medical field to be empathetic to older adults. The purpose of using VR software was to simulate age-related ailments enabling participants to become familiar and informed with health issues related to older adults (Dyer, Swartzlander, & Gugliucci, 2018, p1). In other words, the simulation would allow students to gain a perspective in the shoes of an older adult with age-related health issues.

Collaborating with the teaching library the project used software from a firm called embodied labs. The software enables students to gain a first-person perspective in areas such as macular degeneration and hearing loss as well as Alzheimer’s disease and end-of-life discussions (Dyer, Swartzlander, & Gugliucci, 2018, p1).

The Framework also used pre- and post-assessments that are embedded in the software, creating the assignment to integrate into the staff training and geriatric’s curriculum (Dyer, Swartzlander, & Gugliucci, 2018, p1).

The researchers tested the model with library workers as well as with 178 volunteer medical students during its first year. The 24-library schedule allowed students to partake in the project that work best for them, this appeared to facilitate a greater cohort of participant engagement. To date, over 600 students from diverse disciplines such as medicine, physician assistant, physical therapy, and nursing have participated (Dyer, Swartzlander, & Gugliucci, 2018, p1).

According to the researchers, the project effectively introduced a new modality to students from the various disciplines who participated in the project as well as their curricula (Dyer, Swartzlander, & Gugliucci, 2018, p1). In other words, using a simulated VR platform, provided a new way for students to experience and consume information in a manner that traditional methods did not, such as, enabling participants to experience age-related ailments from the standpoint of the person with the condition.

The assessment findings apparently revealed that VR enhanced students’ understanding of age-related ailments as well as enhanced their empathy for older adults with Alzheimer’s disease, vision, and hearing loss (Dyer, Swartzlander, & Gugliucci, 2018, p1).

While preliminary, the VR immersion training appears to have been beneficial. According to the author’s it has aided students’ in there understanding of age-related ailments, as well as enhance their empathy towards older adults. In addition (to this), there was a strong partnership with the library, which apparently help students familiarise themselves with library resources relating to age-related health issues. In fact, it was clear that the library partnership was a key factor in the success of the project, as too was the specialised software obtained from Embodied Labs.

Reference

Dyer, E., Swartzlander, B.J. & Gugliucci, M.R., 2018. Using virtual reality in medical education to teach empathy. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 106(4), pp.498–500.

[procrastinatingsnail]

I’m really upset that I can not participate in the Women’s March tomorrow. I wish work would be like “JK we have bigger fish to fry today” but literacy is important too so I guess I will be protesting in my own way. We did put up a protest display of books that can be checked out called “Rad Women in History” for elementary kids. Maybe if these kids learn to read and love reading, then maybe they will be educated voters someday.

[shovelandspade]

Humanity is going to require a substantially new way of thinking if it is to survive.

Albert Einstein