Background

The IPL programme delivered by the Centre for Interprofessional Practice (CIPP) is constantly being monitored and developed to provide Health and Social Care students at the UEA with the best possible opportunities to investigate and acquire the specific knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviour required for effective teamworking and interprofessional collaboration to improve care delivery.

The compulsory IPL programme for first year students (IPL1) is delivered to students training to become: doctors, midwives, nurses, occupational therapists, operating department practitioners, pharmacists, physiotherapists, social workers and speech and language therapists.

Following collaboration and consultation with all the Schools within the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, the IPL1 programme has been completely revised and updated for 2012/3 and includes the following components:

Teamwork session
 

Students attend a two-hour workshop designed to demonstrate both effective and ineffective teamworking.  All students are assigned to small, multi-professional groups and are given a task to complete that will require the involvement of all group members.  This preliminary exercise is followed by a short video clip of a multi-professional health and social care team in action.  Each group will be asked to identify various aspects of teamworking demonstrated in the video, discuss issues related to this and agree on key learning points from the session.

Exploration of own team role and personality style
 

In relation to the teamwork session (either before or after), students will be required to investigate their own personality style and preferred role within a team by completing confidential, on-line assessment(s).

Interactive learning tool
 

Students view on-line interviews with health and social care professionals to find out more about the roles of each profession and how they interact.

Reflective assignment
 

The written assignment for IPL1 is a reflection on what students have learnt from the different aspects of IPL1.  As part of this reflection students will describe their on-going learning needs as future collaborative practitioners.

Shadowing
 

Prior to the second level of IPL (IPL2) students may be asked to shadow a health or social care professional in the practice setting.  Depending on their course of study, students will be informed about the requirements for these shadowing events.