Tracy Paulenko, Interprofessional Education Leader at University Health Network (UHN), facilitates a discussion with University of Toronto learners from various health and social care programs during an interprofessional education session provided in partnership with UHN and the Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare and Education (CACHE).
The next generation of health and social care workers are learning to work collaboratively to optimize care with patients/families/caregivers. Students are going beyond the classroom learning of profession-specific skills and theories. During clinical placements/rotations at hospital sites across Ontario, students are integrating their uniprofessional skills with collaborative team-based skills through interprofessional education (IPE).
Health and social care issues facing patients are complex, and require people from multiple roles and professions to work together. Rarely are the efforts of one professional/role alone able to provide the care needed by patients and caregivers across the health care system. Practicing collaboratively can decrease patient complications and lengths of stay, hospital admissions, clinical error and mortality rates, and staff/caregiver disagreements and turnover (World Health Organization [WHO], 2010).
To practice collaboratively, students must learn about, from and with other health care workers (WHO, 2010). For example, a nurse must understand their own role and other health care workers' roles during an emergency code. It is ideal for this interprofessional education to be embedded in training at both schools and hospitals. This scaffolds the learning and supports students as they work towards becoming practicing professionals in health care teams.
Enabling health and social care students to build their collaborative skills requires multiple partnerships. A cross-organizational partnership has been created with the Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare and Education (CACHE), University of Toronto and the Toronto Academic Health Science Network (TAHSN) hospitals. University Health Network (UHN) is the lead hospital in this partnership. Like many other hospitals in TAHSN and beyond, UHN and CACHE work together to prepare students for collaborative practice.
CACHE leads the IPE curriculum for 4,500 students from the University of Toronto's 12 health and social care profession programs each year (e.g., Pharmacy, Nursing, Medicine, Social Work). The goal is to prepare collaborative-practice ready graduates with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes to lead with compassion, innovation, and resilience. The aim is to support health care system transformation (CACHE, 2024). The curriculum includes both classroom-based learning and community-based learning. It is grounded in the (newly revised!) Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative (CIHC) Competency Framework for Advancing Collaboration. Throughout their chosen program, students learn about scopes of practice, negotiation of roles, communication, team function, etc.
In clinical placements across Ontario hospitals, students are able to put classroom theory into practice by working with many different types of health care workers in a variety of programs and services. They “learn while doing" from others through shadowing, interviewing and working together with team members from different roles. Hospitals have a vital role in providing these experiential, workplace-based learning opportunities for students. For example, over 5,000 students from approximately 120 schools come to UHN each year. Being onsite at hospitals further fosters students' learning on how to collaborate in practice. The cornerstone of these experiences are the preceptors and clinical instructors who role model collaboration in their daily work. Preceptors support the student's integration into the team and can deepen their understanding of team dynamics, communication, addressing disagreements, etc. Preceptors and clinical instructors play a key role in encouraging reflection on team collaboration, and their own, and students, collaborative behaviours. They also encourage self-directed activities like shadowing or interviewing team members for students to learn about, from and with other professions.
Evaluation of the practice implications of participating in clinical interprofessional education experiences show that students gain valuable insights about their own and others' scopes of practice. Students develop respect for the diversity of professions/roles, the expertise each brings, and their contributions to care. They gain skills in team communication and cultivate professional connections for consultations across the care continuum. And finally, they recognize the importance of team interdependency for patient-centred care (Paulenko et al., 2015).
Collaborative learning experiences at hospital sites enrich the profession-specific learning of students. They provide real-world opportunities to learn and develop clinical expertise together. In reflecting on how these collaborative learning experiences influence their future practice behaviors, students become practice-ready collaborative leaders in providing care with patients/families/caregivers in hospitals and communities across the system. A collaborative win for all!
For further information, questions, comments, please contact us at teachingearning@uhn.ca
References
Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative. (2024). CIHC Competency Framework for Advancing Collaboration 2024. www.cihc-cpis.com
Paulenko, T., Rolfe, D., Boaro, N., Cameron, K., Kwong, J., Muc, L., Pathmaganth, L., Roth, I., Ruttan, L., Sandison, N., Sockalingam, S., Lowe, M. (2015, September 28-30). Enhancing Participation in Structured Interprofessional Education Clinical Experiences for Students: Practice Implications of a Theme-based Approach [Poster session]. Collaborating Across Borders V Conference 2015, Roanoke, VA, United States.
Adapted from the University of Toronto Interprofessional Education (IPE) Curriculum Report 2023-2024 (p. 3), 2024. Copyright 2024 by the University of Toronto, Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare & Education (CACHE).
World Health Organization. (2010). Framework for Action on Interprofessional Education & Collaborative Practice (WHO/HRH/HPN/10.3). Geveva: Department of Human Resources for Health. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/hrh/nursing_midwifery/en/