This is a mixed-media course designed to educate and familiarize graduate students to the uniqueness of the clinical environment to support their clinically focused graduate research. Completing this course before physically integrating into the live environment will help facilitate a smoother transition into the clinical space and team for students. Currently at IMS, graduate students are expected to self-learn the multifaceted skills needed to succeed in the clinical environment. This course aims to fill the gap by providing graduate students with a formal learning environment using immersive virtual reality and traditional learning methods (i.e., lectures, readings, discussion) to gain skills that will support clinical and health services research. Graduate students who are conducting clinical research, health services research, or are patient-facing will benefit from this course.

In this course, students will learn how best to navigate inter- and multi-professional teams within the clinical setting. Students will also learn how to communicate with patients and their caregivers to recruit, educate, support, and maintain relationships with patients participating in their studies. Specific activities include, but are not limited to, obtaining informed consent, communicating study objectives in lay language, ethical practices in research with patient participants, confidentiality, and EDI in research with patient participants. This will be a particularly useful course for graduate students who are new to conducting patient-facing and/or clinically focused graduate research.