Morrison, Susan C. (2009) Interprofessional education- who needs it? We can work on a team! In: Papers from ANZAME 2009 Conference. From: ANZAME 2009 Conference, 30 June - 3 July 2009, Launceston, TAS, Australia. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The use of the word ‘team player’ has become so ubiquitous, that most people report that they are team players. Where and how people learn to work on teams… and successfully are hard to determine.

Support for team skills is given importance by universities when they list it as a generic attribute their students will posses upon graduation. A university’s generic attributes are knowledge, skills and attitudes not connected to discipline- specific knowledge that are necessary for a new graduate to begin in the workplace. Literature on teaming in university for class work is abundant and found in all curricula such as business, education, allied health and medicine. However, few universities explicitly teach teaming skills even though courses require team assignments. Literature on team assignments within the university curriculum highlights many positive and negative issues for both the instructor and the student. Yet, business is firm on the need for team skills to be an explicitly taught skill.

In recent years, there have been directives from governments, organizations and universities to implement interprofessional education so not to perpetuate the ‘silo’ mentality created when students and instructors teach and learn within their specific discipline. Unfortunately, confusion of terms and definitions get in the way of the teaching structure. Interprofessional education has two important elements: learning together and most importantly, from each other. Thus, many universities refer to large classes where students from different disciplines sit in a large auditorium as interprofessional education. However, if students from different curriculums are not learning from each other, it is merely a cross-disciplinary class. Literature has shown that without the interaction of learning from each other, a prior attitudes toward other professions is perpetuated. There are numerous research articles, which talk to the beneficial elements of interprofessional education. However, the implementation has continued to be a problem as reported in the literature.

It is the purpose of this paper, to discuss a model of team learning for students that provide explicit steps in teaching team skills. The need for this is that within the allied health and medicine field, our students will be working with each other in the professional arena. Opportunities for interprofessional education are happening, if slowly, but much can be done with the status quo to insure students are successful team members so that when opportunities are created within their learning process, they will have the basis for interprofessional work.

Item ID:	8780
Item Type:	Conference Item (Poster)
Related URLs:	http://www.anzame.unsw.edu.au/PDF/Bullet...
Additional Information:	Conference theme "Bridging Professional Islands"
Date Deposited:	02 Jun 2010 04:47
FoR Codes:	11 MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES > 1103 Clinical Sciences > 110399 Clinical Sciences not elsewhere classified @ 100%
SEO Codes:	92 HEALTH > 9202 Health and Support Services > 920201 Allied Health Therapies (excl. Mental Health Services) @ 100%
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