School of Medicine delivers online short course: “Facilitating interprofessional education in a health or care setting”
The School of Medicine delivered a short course on the 28th June, entitled: “Facilitating Interprofessional Education in a Health or Care Setting”. This was one in a series of postgraduate short courses the school have been developing as part of the Medical School Strategy. This course was targeted at health professionals with a remit in supporting education for staff or students within health or care settings. The aim of the course was to enable participants to consider the opportunities within their own working contexts to bring different health professions together or students from different programmes of training together for interprofessional learning. The course was co-authored and delivered by Dr Veronica O’Carroll, Ms Mairi McKinley and Ms Margaret Braid and co-facilitated by Ms Caroline Forbes.
The course was held online and saw participants from different healthcare backgrounds and disciplines attend, joining from across various countries including the UK, Germany, Ireland, Oman and Qatar. Its interactive design meant that participants could discuss their experiences and learn from one another. The course showed the important role that health professionals play in providing rich learning experiences for students and shaping their future practice.
Dr O’Carroll shared that she was inspired to see people attend from across the globe, share their experiences and learn from one another. “Often when students from different programmes of training are in placement settings, there are missed opportunities for them to learn together and to explore each other’s roles and responsibilities”, and this is also often the case for staff working in health services she said. “There is a growing body of research evidence to show the impact of interprofessional education on collaborative practice and the quality of care delivered to patients”, she added. She thanked the university’s global interprofessional community network which helped spread the course invitation across social media and other platforms and was instrumental in its success: “The course has given us the opportunity to showcase the expertise that we have here at the University of St Andrews and that we are exploring ways to use education to impact health service delivery and patient care.”
Ms Forbes, PG & Short Course Development Coordinator, also explained that the course was a useful forum for participants to share best practices. “The participants all appreciated the learning experience and opportunity to network with fellow professionals”, she shared. Direct feedback from the participants was also very positive, with one participant saying, “thank you for the great organisation of the event, providing materials and insights and for creating an open atmosphere online, which allowed an open exchange!” Other participants expressed their appreciation of the multidisciplinary learning environment, the mixed backgrounds of the participants, accessibility of resources and opportunity to network internationally.
Ms Forbes added that this course is one of many short courses that the school will be running and urged interested participants to keep an eye out for announcements on the school’s short course website or social media.