Educational Perspectives on Compassionate Concussion Care: A Scoping Review.

BACKGROUND

Teaching compassionate concussion care, particularly by engaging patients and caregivers as partners in education, is a complex and evolving field. Clinician-educators are now expected to move beyond traditional methods and draw on diverse approaches to understand how people learn. Yet, many current teaching practices lack clear theoretical grounding, limiting their ability to prepare physicians to address patients' individual needs. Despite growing interest in compassion education, little is known about how paradigms shape postgraduate concussion-care training and assessment. This scoping review aimed to (1) explore the educational paradigms and learning theories underpinning postgraduate concussion-care education and (2) contrast the paradigms guiding assessment of and for learning.

METHODS

Following Arksey and O'Malley's scoping review framework, we searched MEDLINE, Embase, ERIC, Cochrane, and CINAHL. Eligible articles described full-length postgraduate concussion-care educational interventions. Extracted data included intervention design, educational paradigm, learning theory and reported outcomes.

FINDINGS: Of the 1574 articles screened, 9 met inclusion criteria. Identified paradigms included behaviourism, positivism, cognitivism and constructivism. Social-cultural learning theory (a form of Constructivism) appeared in six of nine studies. Most studies did not explicitly state their guiding paradigm or align assessment with compassionate outcomes.

CONCLUSION

This review highlights the implicit paradigms shaping concussion-care education and their limitations for cultivating compassion. Constructivism offers the most promise for advancing compassionate practice by fostering collaboration, reflection, and learner agency. Given the interpersonal, cognitive and contextual demands of concussion care, adopting a constructivist orientation may better prepare physicians to meet patient and caregiver needs.