Multi-disclipinary workshops bring students together
If the walls could talk: students on placement with Latrobe Community Health Service take part in multi-disciplinary workshops.
Part of the program involving the Monash University Department of Rural and Indigenous Health (MUDRIH) and Latrobe Community Health Service (LCHS) is various workshops and clinics for students on placement at LCHS.
Mollie Burley, Jane Taylor and Sue Townsend have been conducting these for some time. Recent workshops included an Interprofessional Collaboration workshop for students from differing health disciplines including medicine, dentistry, nursing, physiotherapy, pharmacy and counselling, while another was an Integrated Student Supervised Clinic, again for students for different disciplines.
Interprofessional Collaboration Workshops are offered whenever students from three or more disciplines are on placement at LCHS at the same time.
The three hour workshop consists of interactive learning activities where the students learn about each other’s professional roles. They finish with a case study where they collaborate to examine the case and then come up with recommendations for referral and ongoing treatment.
A recent workshop involved students from medicine, dentistry, nursing, physiotherapy, pharmacy and counselling. The workshop helped students to learn with, from, and about each other by doing activities such as Talking Walls, where they write on wall paper about what they think is the scope of practice of the other disciplines in the room.
The students all gave the workshop the thumbs up with high evaluations including comments such as “enjoyable and insightful.”
The materials and student workbooks for these workshops have been developed in conjunction with Monash University Department of Rural and Indigenous Health. The workshop is co-presented by staff from different program areas within Latrobe Community Health Service (LCHS) in conjunction with Interprofessional Educator Jane Taylor.
As part of the Integrated Student Supervised Clinic (ISSC), two students from differing disciplines are invited each week to take part.
The weekly supervised clinic program consists of a three hour session with Jane Taylor who briefs the students, explaining the nature of the research and ensuring the students’ involvement is entirely voluntary.
The students then have planning time to collaborate about sharing the interview questions before they call in the simulated client and interview the client together. The two students have an opportunity to ask the supervisor to come into the room at any time to ask questions, but in reality they are fully responsible for the interview. They are expected to elicit the client’s key medical and social issues and advise on a care plan involving appropriate referrals to other services for the benefit of the client.
To complete the learning experience the simulated patient is taken out of the role and responds to the students by giving positive feedback about how it felt to be the client.
As a final part of the learning experience the students watch excerpts from the videoed interview and discuss the points of learning with the supervisor. Students can attend several times to interview different simulated clients with a different partner and increase their opportunity to practice interview skills.
It has proved a rewarding experience for all students who have participated.