st

Griffith Health will, through leadership and innovation in teaching, research and community engagement, create sustained improvements in all aspects of health and health care for the local, national and international communities

 Health Group recognises for the vision to be achieved and for human health to continue to improve in the 21st Century, it will be essential for health care workers to develop and utilize high level competencies in inter-professional collaboration
 Both the Griffith Health Strategic and Operational plans emphasize the Group's commitment to this area through identifying it as one of the priority programs areas within Health IDEAS

Griffith Health schools needed to review curricula to incorporate and/or build upon existing IPL activities
For the programs that do not lead directly to qualification as a clinical health professional, a modified range of inter-professional learning activities had to be investigated

 Increased access to health care
 Improved outcomes for people with chronic diseases
 Less tension and conflict among caregivers
 Better use of clinical resources
 Easier recruitment of caregivers
 Lower rates of staff turnover
Lemieux-Charles L, et al. What do we know about health care team effectiveness? Med Care Res Rev 2006;63(3):263 –300

 IPP is defined as, “ participation of all members of the team involved in direct and indirect health service delivery to accomplish common goals of improving health care”
 Graduates of generic and allied health science programs tend to administer and manage projects in health care industry and research
 Prevention and management of chronic disease in individuals has become health care priority

Clinical service professional students experience with a real life, work integrated, learning experience of practice in an inter-professional team, under supervision
This is an issue for generic degrees, Med Lab
Science students will meet this requirement while on clinical placement, but what can we do with
Health Science and Biomed Science???

Course: Health Challenges in 21 st Century
A core course for the first year students from all MSC programs

Courses: Molecular Medicine & Haematology II
Core courses for all 3 rd and 4 th year Biomedical
Science and Medical Laboratory Science students and elective for many other programs across the school

 Communications Lecture
» Delivered by Linda Humphries
 Communications Work Shops
» Coordinated by Pit Chan, Heather de Watteville-Doe,
Linda Humphries and Simulated Persons/Patients
 IPL Workshops
» Designed and coordinated by academics of MSC and
Pit Chan under guidance of Gary Rogers

 Work effectively in a team , both as team member & leader
 Describe the potential barriers to effective teamwork & strategies through which they may be overcome
 Express professional opinions competently, confidently & respectfully to colleagues in any health related profession
 Listen to the opinions of other health professionals (directly or indirectly involved in patient care) effectively & respectfully, valuing each contribution in relation to its usefulness for the patient, client or community concerned rather than on the basis of the professional background of its contributor
Adapted from The Framework for Interprofessional Learning at Griffith Health 2011-2014

 Teams
» 109 students divided into about 18 teams of 6 students each
 Student cohorts
» Biomedical Science 3 rd year, Med Lab Sc 3 rd & 4 th year,
Nursing PG & Med Sc
 Facilitators
» Health IDEAS staff involved in IPL
» Simulated patients
» MSC academics
» Demonstrators and other volunteers

 Students spent 20 minutes to discuss material presented at the communication skills lecture before the start of the first simulation
 Each student worked for about 10 minutes with a
SP who enacted a case scenario created to try communication skills provided in the lecture
» Rest of the students from the group observed the interaction through a one way glass window.
 Following the simulation, the student who was in the simulation received feedback from all the observers and SP

4 scenarios discussed and presented by 4 groups each of 6 students formed from different disciplines and programs
Student groups did not change between communication and IPL workshops
 Group A – Leadership, Teamwork, Efficiency and
Communication
 Group B – Serious Hazard of Transfusion (SHOT) and
Transfusion Policy
 Group C – Ethics, Teamwork, Communication and Working with community
 Group D – Case management of chronic disease

 Group A – Leadership, Teamwork, Efficiency and
Communication
» Due to the global financial downturn, each department of a major biomedical corporation must increase efficiency by 5%
» The departments in the organisation include laboratory testing, research unit, drug development, quality improvement & assurance, occupational health and safety, biotechnology (engineering), IT, administration, management, finance, and marketing.
 Team Challenge:
» Role play as each department manager
» Device a strategy to meet the above scenario
» What sort of things can they do as individual department to improve efficiency or increase sales?
» Should they try to understand the needs and different users point of view with patient care as primary focus before making any cuts?

 Group B – Serious Hazard of Transfusion (SHOT) and
Transfusion Policy
» Emergency blood transfusion required for an elderly patient, with multiple lapses in judgement from ordering of blood, collection and transport of sample, testing and administration of blood
» Due to time constraint certain guidelines were also overlooked, as a result the patient had a transfusion reaction
 Team Challenge:
» Knowing that 50% of transfusion reaction events are attributed to multiple errors, students to discuss all possible sources of errors in the above scenario
» What sort of things can they do as a Blood Transfusion Committee to improve safety for the patients and reduce the inefficient use of blood products donated by public?

 Group C – Ethics, Teamwork, Communication and Working with community
» A group of junior scientists assigned to the team involved in the recruitment of participants after obtaining Human Research Ethics
Committee’s (HREC) approval
» The research proposes to explore the relationship between health professionals and people with mental health issues in a small, socially closed rural community with a lot of social problems. A
“dual relationship” exists in this community because patients are likely to know their health professionals both socially and professionally
 Team Challenge:
» Are the team leaders concerned these dual relationships may cause a conflict of interest, or affect the treatment of the participants they are trying to recruit? How will they proceed?

 Group D – Case management of chronic disease
» An elderly lady with NIDDM prescribed medication and asked to change her life style and see the diabetes care plan professionals without lot of guidelines or support
» She made appointments with a dietician, exercise physiologist , podiatrist and ophthalmologist
» She went to pharmacy and was asked about her condition, other medications, treatment plan.
» She felt conflicting suggestions were made by pharmacist who did not have any information from her GP
 Teams challenge:
» How to support the patient and deal with the lack of communication between care providers?

Group Group
Team work

Collaboration

Division of tasks
Leadership
Communication

Active listening

Non-verbal communication

Paraphrasing

Empathy
Valuing self and others contributions

Respect
Ethical issues

 Students submitted reflections (draft for a feedback) followed by final reflections for grading as part of Molecular Medicine assignment
 Students were given reflection writing guidelines (questions to guide reflections based on learning objectives and facilitators feedback) and
 Following marking rubric was used by students as guideline as well
(modified to fit the purpose from Griffith University Affective Learning
Scale (GUALS provided by Gary Rogers)
1
No
Evidence of affective learning
2
Evidence of noticing some aspects of experience
3
Evidence of some reflection of the personal experience
4
Evidence of some value of the experience to the student
5
Evidence of significant impact on the student’s value
Team work
Leadership
Communication
Valuing self & others contributions
Ethical issues

strongly disagree disagree neutral agree
1 8 strongly agree
8 1.The workshop was well organized
2.I received helpful feedback on my performance 3 14
3.The workshop engaged me in learning 6 11
4.The lecture prepared me for the workshop
5.Overall I am satisfied with the quality of this workshop
5
1
9
7
3
9
Most free comments reflected:
• Benefit of personal feedback on how they can improve & understanding the way different SPs communicate and thinking about what I would do if I were interviewing
• Listening skills- being able to listen and give back sympathetic and empathetic
• Difference between open and closed questions

 A survey with 19 questions was completed voluntarily by students
(questionnaires are yet to be analyzed)
 Overall Qualitative feedback (open end questions ands reflections) was positive (well received and appreciated)
» Reflections indicate students understood how other health professionals perform in the real world and provided them with the sense of comradeship
» They felt they could identify people’s real strengths and enjoyed learning with and from each other
» They could view a situation from different angles and realized students/professionals from different backgrounds need to contribute effectively and efficiently to patient & community care by understanding each others role and perspective

 The preparation the students had was good and from speaking with them they all enjoyed the role playing/acting sessions
 Really impressed with the mature way the students approached to scenarios and the way they self facilitated their groups
 Very valuable learning experience for our students, enjoyed being involved, it was an excellent addition
 Learning to interact or making then aware of just how many different categories of people they are actually going to encounter in their careers, is rather crucial
 I was lucky enough to be able to sit in on the first session with PC and I found it was so informative and useful for following IPL workshop
 I think it is a positive step forward in the students training
 Watching the students interact with a wider group and having to come up with a set of common goals is in fact a reality in the “real world”
 IPL activities were a great learning exercise for students to analyze, troubleshoot and find ways to work-around the scenarios that they would face in the workforce.

School of Medical Science
 Dr Roselyn Rose’Meyer
 Dr Dean Pountney
 Dr Jessica Vanderlelie
 Dr Helen Massa
 Dr Helen Irving-Rodgers
Health IDEAS & IPL team
 Leon Christopher
 Helen Bodell
 Niki Edwards
 Leisa Petersen
 Karen Lynch
 Mrt Abishek Santhakumar
 Mr Stephen Smith
 Ms Pam Taylor
Nursing
 Ms Julie Shaw
 Ms Yun Mi Nguy
All SPs