Collaboration in Action
Collaboration in Action: Health Care Mentors Partner with Students to Achieve Interprofessional Competency
The Queen’s University Faculty of Health Sciences Board endorsed the Competency Framework for Interprofessional Education in 2009, indicating its support for interprofessional education (IPE) activities for all health sciences students in order to prepare them to be collaborators in their professional practices. The framework includes 3 stages of activities leading to interprofessional competency: Exposure, Immersion and Competence. The Office of Interprofessional Education and Practice (OIPEP) implements educational activities to introduce students to IPE concepts (Exposure) and to provide opportunities to collaborate in the classroom (Immersion).
In the winter of 2011, OIPEP introduced a pilot activity called Collaboration in Action (CIA), which took students into the community to partner with health care mentors, individuals in the community who are affected by health challenges, to learn about and experience collaborative teamwork (Competence). The pilot brought together 62 students, from the nursing, occupational therapy and physical therapy programs (16 IP teams), partnered with 16 health care mentors, to work together in teams to learn about and experience collaboration so that students would enter their health care practices having met a number of interprofessional competencies. CIA was overseen by the CIA Planning Group and facilitated by Queen’s Faculty of Health Sciences faculty and patient/client representatives.
In 2012, the CIA project was embedded within courses for students in the Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy and Advance Standing Track Nursing programs, making it a required element of the curriculum for 170 students. The health care mentor group expanded to 20, with many mentors meeting with two of the 32 IP teams. The project took place over a 6 week period in January and February and included an orientation session, completion of two online modules with an associated quiz, student IP team meetings, team meetings with Health Care Mentors (in their homes and/or a community setting) and team presentations to an expert panel of judges (faculty, clinician and patient/client representative).
The CIA project was presented at the biannual Collaborating Across Borders conference in Tucson, Arizona in November 2011 and an article about the project is currently in press in the Winter 2012 issue of Academic Quarterly journal.
Objectives of the CIA project:
1. CIA students will understand the importance of developing and maintaining effective interprofessional and collaborative relationships that include learners, practitioners and patients/clients/families as evidenced by completing educational modules, team meetings, mentor visits and oral assignment presentations.
2. CIA students will demonstrate the application of the collaborative process to the clinical setting through positive team function and application of module content, evidenced by team presentations.
3. CIA students will have met the six National IP Competencies (CHIC, 2010) as evidenced in mentor visits and team dynamics as well as a final oral presentation.
CIA Planning Group Members: Anne O’Riordan (OIPEP); Jo-Anne Peterson (School of Nursing); Susanne Murphy (Occupational Therapy Program); Trisha Parsons (Physical Therapy Program);
Debbie Docherty, Bill Meyerman & Jeanette Parsons (Patient/Client Representatives).
References:
- A framework for interprofessional education. (2009). Faculty of Health Sciences, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, CA. Retrieved November 2, 2010 from http://meds.queensu.ca/oipep/ipe_framework_for_fhs
- Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative (CIHC). (2010). A national interprofessional competency framework. Retrieved November 2, 2010 from http://www.cihc.ca/files/CIHC_IPCompetencies_Feb1210.pdf
- O’Riordan, A., Peterson, J., Murphy, S., Parsons, T., Docherty, D., Parsons, J., Meyerman, B. & Paterson, M. (2012) Collaboration in Action: Health Care Education, Academic Quarterly. (In press)
