A Reflection on the Use of Mind Mapping for Health Professions Education

Challenge

The delivery of healthcare education for nurses, physicians, dentists, physical therapists, social workers,  and pharmacists has historically taken a siloed approach. This approach is problematic because these  individuals are expected to work together in teams to provide quality patient care, yet they are not  trained to do so.  To address the “wicked” problem of how might we increase interprofessional  educational opportunities across healthcare disciplines, a national organization convened a group of  healthcare educators to participate in a design-thinking workshop.

Selection

The organizers selected a mind mapping exercise using sticky notes to get participants thinking  creatively about how we as educators might address the wicked problem.  As we learned in this course,  mind mapping is a visual method for helping others to understand how ideas relate to each other and is  one of the most universal ways to brainstorm. The unstructured setup allows individual ideas and  thoughts to flow freely. Similar concepts are grouped together, allowing ideas to jump around among  topics, rather than forcing them down a list.  I have personally used this technique in multiple  workshops and sessions to address difficult and challenging issues in medical education.

Application

In the most recent exercise using the mind mapping technique, we gathered together in one room 30  health professions educators and divided them into groups of six.  Everyone was given a pen and a set of  sticky notes and sent to their respective groups to begin brainstorming how we might increase  interprofessional educational opportunities across multiple healthcare disciplines. We had only one rule  which was that every idea offered up must in some way be “actionable.”  Each group was assigned a  staff person to manage the sticky notes, to group them on a wall according to concepts, and to refuse  any idea that was not actionable.  Each team was challenged to develop at least 50 different ideas over  20 minutes.  After the 20 minutes, each group reviewed their sticky notes and if necessary moved them  around for better concept grouping.  As you might expect, the exercise created a lot of noise and  excitement in the room as participants brainstormed and wrote down their ideas.  Once this activity was  completed, participants were paired with a participant from another group.  Each participant was asked  to share the ideas generated from their group session and to select one best idea for prototyping later  that afternoon.

Insight

Most of my previous experience with mind mapping exercises has been limited to 90-minute workshops,  and even in those sessions, the actual mind mapping part of the workshop lasted no more than 45  minutes.  The session I described above took place over a total of 4 hours.  I really appreciated having  another 2.5 hours to dig a little deeper and experience design-thinking methodology more fully.  Each  group generated at least 30 ideas, and several groups generated more than 50 ideas.  This process is  amazing for generating a lot of ideas in a very short time.  One downside was the small size of the room  in which the activity took place.  We worked in a small, windowless hotel conference room which was  not very conducive to creative thinking – although we did not let that stop us!  In the future, however, I

would want to make sure the room set up was appropriate for the size of the group and that the  surroundings encouraged creativity.

Approach

For this activity, mind mapping was a terrific design-thinking tool to use.  It rapidly engaged people and  moved them outside their comfort zone.  A lot of very good, actionable ideas were generated and are  available for continued discussion and thinking about this wicked problem.  I plan to use this  methodology more in future workshops.

With that said, there are other design-thinking tools that could have been used in this exercise.  I am a  fan of storytelling, or using narrative, to develop empathy around an issue or challenge.  This method  can really create a sense of urgency and move people to action quickly.  For example, we know that  patient care is improved when educational barriers are removed, and healthcare providers learn to work  cooperatively in teams.  In this workshop, the organizers could have used a story, perhaps a patient  story which described a poor patient outcome because of healthcare providers not working together as  a team.  This kind of story motivates, helps communicate the problem, and opens the door to  envisioning a different future.

