Ana L. Oliveira, DrPH, MSPH, MS, is an assistant professor in the School of Health Professions, Clinical Laboratory Sciences Program, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in Birmingham, Alabama.
Catherine Hogan Smith, MLS, MPH, is a professor and senior research librarian for Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in Birmingham, Alabama.
J Physician Assist Educ. 2023 Mar 1;34(1):41-45. doi: 10.1097/JPA.0000000000000481. Epub 2023 Jan 18.
Service-learning (SL) is a pedagogy that can be used in healthcare education to develop students who are better prepared to address the various social determinants of health and to provide compassionate care to the diverse populations they will serve. Yet, an assessment of the quality and scope of the SL activities used in physician assistant (PA) education is not available. The purpose of this scoping review is to review the literature and identify and summarize articles about SL courses in PA education.
We performed a scoping literature search of 4 databases (CINAHL, PubMed, Embase, and Scopus) to identify peer-reviewed journal articles about SL in PA education. Studies that did not include PA students, were not a service-learning activity (but instead an interprofessional activity, simulation, or volunteerism), or were not a full article were all excluded.
Nine articles were included in this scoping review after independent evaluation by 2 investigators based on specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. The most common reason for exclusion was lack of distinct learning objectives specific to the service learning and/or a lack of a structured, guided critical reflection that helped realize and demonstrate the desired learning outcomes.
Although service-learning is considered to be a high-impact teaching practice, it is still an underutilized tool in PA education. Training faculty in the implementation of SL to align the hands-on activity with specific course learning objectives and in the effective use of structured critical reflection can create a more impactful and authentic SL educational experience.
服务学习（SL）是一种可以用于医疗保健教育的教学方法，可以培养学生更好地应对各种健康决定因素，并为他们将要服务的多样化人群提供富有同情心的护理。然而，目前尚无法评估医师助理（PA）教育中使用的 SL 活动的质量和范围。本研究旨在对文献进行综述，以确定和总结 PA 教育中的 SL 课程文章。
我们对 4 个数据库（CINAHL、PubMed、Embase 和 Scopus）进行了范围广泛的文献检索，以确定关于 PA 教育中的 SL 的同行评审期刊文章。排除了不包括 PA 学生、不是服务学习活动（而是跨专业活动、模拟或志愿服务）或不是完整文章的研究。
经过 2 名研究人员根据具体的纳入和排除标准进行独立评估后，有 9 篇文章被纳入本范围综述。最常见的排除原因是缺乏与服务学习相关的明确学习目标，或者缺乏结构化、引导式的批判性反思，以帮助实现和展示预期的学习成果。
尽管服务学习被认为是一种高影响力的教学实践，但它在 PA 教育中仍未得到充分利用。培训教师实施 SL 的方法是将实践活动与具体的课程学习目标以及结构化的批判性反思有效结合起来，可以创造更具影响力和真实性的 SL 教育体验。
