Peek on the 3rd Indonesian Health Professional Students’ Session
The 3rd Indonesian Health Professional Students’ Session was part of the 3rd Health Professional Education
Quality (HPEQ) Conference, which was held in Jakarta, 7-8 November 2012. The conference was powered by
the HPEQ Project, Ministry of Education and Culture, Republic of Indonesia, and has been held annually since
2010. As they did in the previous years, this time the committee also gave an opportunity for the Indonesian
health professional student network (HPEQ Student) to hold their own parallel sessions.
This year’s sessions focused mainly on sharing what have been done by the HPEQ Student to improve
student advocacy and interprofessional education and collaboration. On the first day, the HPEQ Student
launched their latest publication entitled “What Do the Students Say?”, which showed the result of the
national study on IPE and student participation in education governance. Then there was also the launching
of the first-time-ever Indonesian health professional students’ journal, which is now accessible online from
www.bimkes.org. And in the evening, the participants were divided into small working groups to discuss
several topics, including IPE, students’ participation in accreditation, and the utilization of media for
advocacy.
What is interesting from the session was, for the first time, HPEQ Student held their own interprofessional
health care team challenge. Inspired by the good practice done at the All Together Better Health VI
Conference in Kobe, Japan, HPEQ Student developed a clinical case picturing a post-partum mother having a
cranial injury from falling at a disaster evacuation camp. Twenty participants from medicine, nursing,
dentistry, midwifery, pharmacy, public health, and nutrition were divided into four groups to create a case
management plan for the patient. All of the participating students were so enthusiastic, and consider the
session really effective to explain the benefit of IPE and IPC. “By practicing out, we can really feel and
experience what interprofessional collaboration is like, not just knowing the theory of its benefits,” said one
of the participants.
Students from different health professions discussing the clinical case at the first HPEQ Student healthcare team
challenge
The next day, to practice the advocacy skills they got from the lectures on the previous day, students
arranged a face-to-face meeting session with stakeholders from each profession, discussing and conveying
their messages about health professional education issues. This was also the first time it was held, and
considering that it gained positive response from the stakeholders as well as the students, such session
might be routinely held.
Samuel Josafat, HPEQ Student