Clara Dallaire
Positions held
| 2024-2025 | Graduate fellow(s), Ethics and health |
Biography
Clara has been a physical rehabilitation therapist since 1992, working in long-term care (CHSLD). She earned a certificate in gerontology from the Université de Montréal in 1996, followed by studies in osteopathy, graduating from the Collège d’études ostéopathiques de Montréal in 2004. After receiving a diagnosis of a chronic, degenerative illness, she reconsidered her career path and completed a Master’s in Education, with a focus on competency assessment, in 2020. That same year, she also completed a microprogram in clinical ethics. Currently, she is a PhD candidate in Biomedical Sciences, specializing in clinical ethics, at the Université de Montréal, under the supervision of Antoine Payot and co-supervision of Nathalie Orr Gaucher.
Her research project is titled Curriculum caché en éducation médicale : Curriculum caché en éducation médicale: Recherche-intervention pour le développement d’un outil réflexif participatif.
The hidden curriculum (HC) in medical education refers to the array of influences embedded in organizational structure and culture, including implicit rules for navigating the institution. This curriculum impacts learning, professional interactions, and clinical practice. The HC holds critical importance in professionalizing learners, fostering interprofessional relationships, and shaping clinician-patient interactions. Though the HC can exert positive effects, its negative impacts are often emphasized: loss of idealism, adoption of professional identities based on rituals, emotional detachment, shifts in ethical integrity, and acceptance of hierarchy. Mechanisms have been put in place to make the negative side of the HC more visible and to facilitate its critique. It is essential to develop innovative approaches to better understand the HC, recognize it in medical practice, and address it constructively with peers, learners, and patients, thereby improving the educational climate, workplace relationships, and ultimately patient care.
The research question is: How can clinical educators be supported in making the HC explicit within learning environments through a pedagogical tool that fosters reflective practice? The main objective is to develop a reflective tool for residency programs to clarify the HC in learning environments within the Faculty of Medicine at UdeM.
The chosen approach is action research (AR), which aims to advance theoretical and practical knowledge while prompting actionable change within the environment. This aligns with the UdeM Faculty of Medicine’s vision to enhance education and improve patient care by examining exposure to the HC in clinical settings and reflecting on its effects on clinicians, learners, and teachers as well as on the quality of patient care. Reflective practice provides an effective means to meet the need for making the HC explicit, assessing its impacts not only on learners and teachers but also on patient care quality. This approach fosters critical questioning of unique professional situations to construct meaning, identify patterns, and develop knowledge applicable in other professional contexts.
A mixed-methods design will collect quantitative data via questionnaires and qualitative data through individual and group interviews with participants. The project consists of four phases: 1) Assessment, 2) Tool development, pre-test, pilot study, 3) Implementation, impact evaluation, and 4) Review of results and knowledge transfer.
This approach will raise awareness among stakeholders about the HC and its implicit messages. The tool aims to become widely applicable in clinical teaching and continuing professional development, reaching a broad range of clinicians to foster sustainable change in certain clinical practices and ultimately improve organizational practices and patient care quality.
