Learn from a textbook? Learn from experience? Why not both?

Interprofessional Health Team learning offers an enriched student experience.

21 August 2013

IntD 410, Interprofessional Health Team Development, is a transformational course in which students develop four core competencies essential to interprofessional (IP), or collaborative health team practice: communication, collaboration, role clarification and reflection.

IntD 410 students come from programs across six health sciences faculties: nursing; medicine and dentistry; rehabilitation medicine; physical education and recreation; pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences; and agriculture, life and environmental sciences. Students are organized in teams, with representation from each faculty. Facilitators (experienced practitioners and UofA faculty) guide teams through a variety of strategies designed to help them share their knowledge and skills, and learn as a team. By working to solve challenges through collaborative learning, these students are preparing to work in real world health-care settings, in which collaborative practise is the way of the future. As simple as it sounds, these interactions can be daunting.

"Imagine going into a case meeting with a room full of strangers," says HSERC director, Sharla King. "You're a newly graduated physical therapist in a room with an established, highly respected medical specialist, a team of nurses, a dietician, maybe a pharmacist. It's intimidating. Students need to learn and practise team skills so they can work at the top of their scope of practise no matter what team they find themselves working with."

"Exposure to all kinds of disciplines provides a unique experience," says William Lau, a fourth year nutrition student, and UofA Students' Union Vice President (Student Life). "The most engaging part of the course," says Lau "is often the interaction with patients in the classroom." The course uses patient mentors, who share personal stories about their experiences in the health system. These mentors are real patients who volunteer their time to help foster understanding and empathy in our future health professionals.

Other innovative activities include simulations with real patient cases and hospital way-finding exercises to build empathy for the patient perspective. These new approaches augment more 'traditional' learning and enrich the student experience.

Course coordinator JoAnne Davies welcomes student feedback and has integrated it into the course development. Special sections (called IP streams) are focused on areas such as continuing care, complementary and alternative medicine, bariatric healthcare, and palliative care. This has encouraged students to approach the course coordinator with their own ideas for IP streams, including immigrant and refugee health, which was added in the 2012-2013 calendar.

"It's an experience that lets students learn about the dynamics and attitudes of team environments in a safe setting; an experience that we hope the students can carry forward in life," says Davies.

The result is a course that uses real encounters to prepare students to be leaders in a health care system increasingly focussed on collaborative practice. A focus that puts the patient at the centre, and promises improved care and health outcomes.

"Collaborative practise and collaborative education are fundamental to high quality, team-based health care," wrote Alberta Health Minister, Fred Horne in his message introducing Collaborative Practise and Education: a Framework for Change. IntD 410 is at the leading edge of that change in health education in Canada.

For more information please see the course details found here.