Teaching Interests

Prof Crawford has teaching and administrative responsibilities at the University of Adelaide. He coordinates and teaches palliative care, pain management and symptom management in all the years of the undergraduate Medical Program at the University of Adelaide. He also provides tutorials in the Master of Health Psychology, Master of Counselling and Psychotherapy and the Master of Surgical Sciences at the University. He chaired the Medical Personal & Professional Development subcommittee of the Medical Program from 2008 to 2021 and has continuing interests in the teaching of indigenous issues, communication, ethics, and medical law components of the Medical Program. He coordinates the Cancer/Palliative Care course in Med 4 and has developed an online program for all Med 4 students.

Since 2008, I have coordinated all of the palliative care input to the medical program. Since that time I have reviewed and updated the content. I provide 5 lectures in Years 1 and 2 covering introduction to palliative care particularly in the community, pain as a symptom, a lecture on symptom control (nausea, vomiting and constipation) that coincides with a problem-based learning case of colorectal cancer, a case-based lecture about breast cancer and alternate therapies and possible adverse outcomes including death, and the issues associated with malignancy of the brain. This provides a tangible teaching strand of palliative care issues that is coordinated with the students’ problem-based small group case. I have rebuilt lectures in collaboration with the Medicine Learning & Teaching Unit staff using a flipped classroom format. I coordinate tutorials in the School of Medicine Teaching Series in Year 4 and 5. These are tutorials in small groups based on case scenarios. Since 2009 I have changed the tutor structure so that there are 2 tutors from different disciplines for each group and increased the number of groups and reduced the group size by increasing the number of tutors, who are all clinicians. I have developed learning objectives and revised the cases to develop discussion about assessment skills and working practically in a clinical team, Advance Care Directives, and goals of care discussions. In Year 4 the topic is pain and tutors are chronic pain and palliative medicine physicians. In Year 5 the topic is Decision-making at the end of life. The tutors are intensive care and palliative medicine physicians. This is a novel model that provides a real example of cross-discipline teamwork and explores how this can work in clinical practice. In Year 6 in the Transition to Internship series I have developed an interactive “Writing death certificates” module. There is an online lecture with exemplars and then case scenarios for practice before the session. The tutorial uses role-playing and humour as well as immediate feedback about student endeavours to complete cause of death certificates.

In 2015 I piloted a new initiative in Year 5 as part of Anaesthesia, Pain Medicine & Intensive Care in the “Pain week” segment. I have written this course and it is provided in the simulation laboratory. There is currently comprehensive communication training in Years 1 to 3. However, the Medical Professional and Personal Development Committee, which I chair, recognised a gap in reinforcing and developing advanced skills in communication once students are more involved in clinical learning. I have refashioned two afternoon sessions. Previously these were large group tutorials about pain. Now, over the year, all Year 5 students spend these two afternoons in groups of 2 or 3 with a tutor and 4 standardised patient scenarios. The 4 case scenarios build a progressive communications strategy that integrates communication strategies and clinical scenarios that generally relate to pain. I have recorded video exemplars that are viewed before the session. This course now integrates end-of-life legal aspects with advanced skill training in discussing limits of medical treatment and symptom control, the trajectory of illness, prognosis and approaching death.  The simulation sessions occur on two days in the same week with increasing difficulty. Tutors provide feedback to assist in the development of advanced communication skills. In 2016 I have extended this program with the innovative addition of video-conferencing to the rural Med 5 students. This allows all the rural students to participate in this program and is now providing a pilot for teaching clinical video conferencing skills that will undoubtedly be important in developing new models of clinical care in Australia. This now allows formal assessment of this material as it is delivered to the entire cohort of Year 5 students. I have provided student evaluations in this document in the SELTS section and have already used some of the comments to modify the course. I now have University of Adelaide ethics approval to formally evaluate this program from 2016, allowing not only more comprehensive assessment of the program but also publication of teaching endeavours.

I have been responsible for all the student attachments in Mary Potter Hospice from 2008 to 2014. I now coordinate student attachments in Northern Adelaide Palliative Service based at Modbury Hospital. An evaluation from the Mary Potter student attachments is included in this Evidence of Achievement, which demonstrates the high satisfaction and regard for these attachments. I have provided most of the teaching and clinical supervision of these students and coordinated their clinical exposure to inpatient, community, and clinic consultation. These are highly prized attachments and the evaluations and a recent published study supports this assertion. This work was published in Academic Medicine in December 2014. Since moving my clinical responsibilities to the Northern Adelaide Local Health Network in February 2015, I now coordinate the clinical attachments in the Northern Palliative Care Service and have initiated a consistent orientation document, consistent information about useful resources including a workbook that I wrote with support from a Commonwealth grant, and am initiating consistent clinical and tutorial opportunities as well as consistent assessment across all the sites of palliative care student attachments as part of the Medical Program at the University of Adelaide, i.e. at The Queen Elizabeth Palliative Care ward, Mary Potter Hospice and Modbury Palliative Care Inpatient Unit.