college ofHealth Disciplines

college ofHealth Disciplines

10th Anniversary2001–2011

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HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY CHD!

In 2001, Senate approved the establishment of the College of Health Disciplines at the University of

British Columbia. The vision of inaugural Principal, John Gilbert, included not only creating cohesion

and strengthening the links between the health and human service programs at UBC, but also advancing

interprofessional education (IPE) and collaborative practice at the university, throughout British Columbia,

nationally, and world-wide. During the last decade, the College has become a resource to its many partners

across the health and human service community to achieve this vision.

We have brought together programs across campus and improved structures, which has allowed us to discuss issues of common concern. Now, for the first time at UBC, all deans or their designates with a health or human service program within their faculty, meet regularly through the Health Deans Advisory Group, chaired by the Principal of the CHD. This has resulted in significant relationship building and new connections across not only health programs but also the education, science, humanities and business sectors. We are discussing critical issues such as health research, determinants of health, advocacy, community partnerships, aboriginal health, and health human resource planning.

We have spent the last 10 years finding ways to improve IPE and influence policy on collaborative practice in the community. We have launched 15 highly rated IHHS courses and have worked diligently to embed IPE into all health and human service programs. The following pages showcase a number of the initiatives resulting from the hard work of the Curriculum, Practice Education and Professional Development Committees. Associate Principal Lesley Bainbridge and the “Interprofessional Action Team” launched the IPE Journey for all HHS students at UBC this fall, starting with the “Big Event”. All of the BC Health Authorities are now engaged with our Professional Development Committee and the Interprofessional Collaborative Learning Series. This workshop series targets practitioners who teach our students. The Health Care Team Challenge is celebrating over 20 years at UBC and is now a global event. Our goal is to ensure that every graduate from a health and human service program at UBC is a competent, collaborative practitioner.

Our partners include our communities. The Division of Health Care Communication has forged strong relationships with community groups and patients whose voices need to be heard and be part of health professional education. The Institute of Aboriginal Health has developed education and research programs that enrich the student experience and create respectful alliances with BC First Nations’ communities.

We at the College take pride in our collective accomplishments. Numerous UBC colleagues, BC health care providers, and community partners, sister universities and colleges in Canada and worldwide have contributed to the stories that are told in the following pages. We thank them all for working with us to achieve enhanced health care for our population.

Louise Nasmith, MDCM, MEd, FCFP, FRCPSC (Hon), Professor and Principal, College of Health Disciplines

“The College of Health Disciplines brings together the Health and Human Service programs at UBC to discuss, develop and implement initiatives that ensure that our graduates are prepared to provide the best care to our population,” Professor David

Farrar, Provost and Vice

President Academic.

Principal’s Message

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Patient safety, staff satisfaction, access to health care, improved communication—all of these and more

provide the overarching rationale for interprofessional collaboration in health and social care. Given the

importance of these issues, it is hard to understand why we have not yet achieved them. However, for the

past 45 years educators and practitioners have been struggling to find the best ways to teach people how

to collaborate within and among professions. In the past several years, the College of Health Disciplines

has made significant progress in the ways in which interprofessional collaboration is taught. The following

are some of the ways in which the College has achieved this….

INTERPROFESSIONAL EDUCATION AND PRACTICE

We have made students, practitioners and patients central to our work. We ask for student input into our interprofessional educational resources and support them in every possible way to help them find ways to learn together. The College considers our community partners essential to our work and tries to link student education and collaborative practice in all of its activities. This includes taking the patient’s voice into account in interprofessional education.

Challenges abound, primarily related to scheduling, time and resources. The College cannot provide an identical interprofessional experience for every health and human services program student—there are just too many of them. Flexibility is therefore one of our key principles. The second key principle is explicit integration into the curriculum; the third is relevance to clinical examples along the continuum of interprofessional learning from classroom to clinic and community. The following three anchors support our work: the National Competency Framework for Interprofessional Collaboration; the exposure, immersion, mastery model; and new ways of operationalizing learning with, from and about each other.

The Division of Interprofessional Education and Practice (DIEP) is grounded in existing research and is working to create new evidence. In addition to the Associate Principal, the Division has three Directors: Curriculum, Practice Education, and Professional Development, supported by a creative team of research and development experts.

Our critical partners—faculty members, students, patients, preceptors and community colleagues—are invited to join us in developing our interprofessional education resources.

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“Students, practitioners and patients are central to our work. We support them in every possible way to help them find ways to learn together.”

The following are some examples of our progress:

• An Interprofessional Student Advisory Group (ISAG) to suggest the kinds of learning opportunities that will resonate with students.

• Work with the Health Sciences Students’ Association (HSSA) and the Community Health Initiative for University Students (CHIUS) to rethink their focus and the supports that they need to allow student innovation to flourish.

• Development of an Interprofessional Education Pathway that will allow students, faculty members and community partners to visualize the journey towards effective collaboration. Part of this pathway will involve an IPE Passport for students across the health and human service programs. The Passport will familiarize students with the learning objectives they need to meet to become competent collaborators and the learning choices they can make along the way. The pathway started this fall with a Big Event at the Chan Centre by introducing almost 1,000 first year students in a range of programs to interprofessional team work.

• Testing hybrid models of learning to try to manage the scheduling challenges. Two interprofessional pain modules have been developed: the lived experience of pain and collaborative assessment and management of pain. These models use both on-line and face-to-face learning approaches. This model is also the basis for an emerging module on patient safety.

• Work with our preceptors to describe an interprofessional clinical placement. The goal is to strengthen students’ opportunities to immerse themselves in effective team–based care, in both rural and urban settings.

There are many other examples of our work and the lessons learned along the way help us to adjust and improve our resources. Visit www.chd.ubc.ca to learn more about how we can help you to improve effective collaboration and teamwork. Ultimately, productive collaboration will enhance health and social care and the lives of patients, families and communities.

Lesley Bainbridge, BSR (PT), MEd, PhD, Associate Principal, College of Health Disciplines, Director, Interprofessional Education, Faculty of Medicine

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The College of Health Disciplines is proud to offer 15 interprofessional elective courses for health and human

service students and other students who are interested in health careers. These courses are designed for

students across a range of programs to come together around areas of common interest. For over 10 years

the IHHS course options have continued to grow and to be well received by students.

INTERPROFESSIONAL HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICE COURSES

The Interprofessional Health and Human Service (IHHS) courses focus on a wide range of topics. Examples include: the Health Care Team Development course which teaches skills, knowledge, roles and issues involved with working successfully in interprofessional health and human service teams; International Indigenous Experiences of Colonization that focuses on the opportunity for comparative inquiry of Indigenous experiences of colonization and the manifestations of that experience in the contemporary socio-cultural environment; and Violence Across the Lifespan which is a new and popular course that addresses intersections of race, class and gender, the long-term impact of childhood exposure to violence, and prevention-focused initiatives. The Ethical Decision-making in Health Care and HIV/AIDS courses are two of the longest standing and most highly - subscribed courses.

Directed by Lynda Eccott and Carrie De Palma of the Division of Interprofessional Education and Practice, the IHHS courses are reviewed regularly to ensure that they meet standards for interprofessional education. IHHS instructors and teaching assistants are drawn from UBC faculties and the broader health care community. Each year a workshop is held for the instructors who teach interprofessional education to help them to learn from other’s experiences and to gain new teaching skills from recognized experts. As with all of the College’s initiatives, we are interested in quality improvement. We are currently exploring options to ensure that funds follow students in order to keep the courses financially viable and are identifying several options to improve accessibility.

The IHHS courses have proven to be one of the College’s strongest assets. The subject areas are relevant across programs and the instructors are passionate about their topics. Students place a high value on the interprofessional engagement of a diverse range of their peers.

For more information about the range of IHHS courses, please go to www.chd.ubc.ca and click on ”courses”.

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IHHS COURSES

IHHS 200 Meanings, Measurements and Determinants of Health: From Theory to Practice

IHHS 300 Working in International Health: A preparatory course for students who are planning to work in the developing world

IHHS 301 First Nations Health and the Traditional Role of Plants

HHS 302 Health Informatics for Health/Life Sciences Students

IHHS 400 Health Care Team Development

IHHS 401 Ethical Decision–Making in Health Care

IHHS 402 HIV Prevention and Care

IHHS 404 First Nations Health: Historical and Contemporary Issues

IHHS 405 Palliative Care

IHHS 406 Aging from an Interprofessional Perspective

IHHS 407 Disability and Justice

IHHS 408 Aboriginal Health: Community–based learning experience

IHHS 409 Is the Past Present? International Indigenous Experiences of Colonization

IHHS 410 Improving Public Health

IHHS 411 Violence Across the Lifespan

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Since its beginnings in 2001, the Health Care Team Challenge (HCTC) has become an acclaimed

flagship event at the College of Health Disciplines. The goal is to increase students’ awareness of their

fellow health professionals and how they might work together when they are eventually practising. The

Challenge has become so popular that a larger venue was needed for the 2011 event to accommodate the

enthusiastic audience.

HEALTH CARE TEAM CHALLENGE™

“ The main benefits are opening students’ minds to the potential benefits of collaborative practice, giving them some sense of who they will work with, making them more practice–ready.”

Every September, two teams of 10–12 students representing all of UBC’s health sciences programs—physiotherapy, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, social work, occupational therapy, human kinetics, dentistry, dental hygiene, audiology, speech and language pathology, philosophy and/or medical ethics—participate in the extra- curricular event. For one compelling hour, the teams work on a complex fictional case study for which they have had two weeks to prepare. Working as a team to prioritize the patient’s care issues is a primary objective. A recent example: the case of a female military officer who had suffered multiple injuries from the explosion of an improvised explosive device (IED) while serving in Afghanistan. Her care spanned several months from the acute to longer term settings. The teams were challenged at the event by complications including an addiction to pain medication and post–traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

National HCTC and similar events take place in Australia, U.S.A. and Canada with Japan joining soon. The Challenge has now expanded internationally. In 2010, two teams composed of faculty and students from Brazil, Japan, New Zealand, U.S.A., Canada and Australia, competed at the All Together Better Health V conference in Sydney. Flowing from the conference, an International Network of Health Care Team Challenges (INHCTC) was formed which held its first meeting at UBC in June, 2011. Its objectives are to assess the impact of the event on interprofessional knowledge and attitudes, describe the learning process that the students follow when participating in the challenge and—long-term—to establish the impact of the HCTC on clinical collaborative practice. Establishing standardization of the format and evaluation to allow for outcomes comparisons in each country is the first step.

The main strength of the interprofessional education (IPE) model inherent in the Challenge is its flexibility. For instance, one might choose to focus on clinical content or context: the Japanese participants in the INHCTC asked for a disaster planning case. The model can also be adapted to cater to different levels of learning, depending on the students’ year of study, previous IPE exposure and experience with different collaborative practice skills. Members of the INHCTC will follow up on their work at the 2011, Collaborating Across Borders 111 Conference. It is hoped that the network will expand to include newcomers from Sweden, Britain, South Africa and South America.

For the students in those countries now experiencing the HCTC, the main benefits are “opening their minds to the potential benefits of collaborative practice, giving them some sense of who they will work with, making them more practice–ready,” states Dr. Christie Newton, Chair of the HCTC.

For more information on the activities of the HCTC visit www.chd.ubc.ca/event/hctc

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INTERPROFESSIONAL COLLABORATIVE LEARNING SERIES

Advancing clinicians’ understanding of the art and science of working collaboratively for patient-centred

care is the goal of the Interprofessional Collaborative Learning Series (IP-CLS). Developed by Victoria

Wood, Project Manager and Dr. Christie Newton, Director, Professional Development Committee, the IP-

CLS consists of seven workshops, each of which focuses on a different element of collaborative practice.

The ultimate objective is to train a wide range of front line clinicians from a variety of health professions and

transform how we deliver care.

“ The curriculum was aligned with our core values and supported participants in gaining much deeper insights into collaborative practice,” Tracy Schott, Fraser

Health Authority.

The program grew from a request for interprofessional development by the College’s health authority partners. A province-wide needs assessment using 10 focus groups, explored practitioners’ needs related to interprofessional collaboration. The Professional Development Committee, which includes representatives from all of the provincial health authorities, provided feedback on the sessions throughout their development.

The series begins with a discussion of interprofessional collaborative practice concepts. The sessions then progress to cover role understanding, collaborative decision making, conflict and change management, care processes and continuous quality improvement. A final “train–the–trainer” session is designed to prepare participants to take their new knowledge into the workplace and use it with their clinical colleagues.

Rather than offering definitions of different clinicians’ roles, the facilitators talk about role stereotypes and emphasize the importance of face to face contact and role negotiation between professional staff, such as team meetings, to improve understanding.

Conflict in the workplace is addressed by looking at where it comes from in the participants’ workplaces and how to turn it into positive outcomes. Role playing a discharge planning meeting commonly exposes competing priorities and overlapping areas of practice between clinicians, providing an opportunity for the participants to find ways to work together to resolve such conflicts. Building on this session, the following workshop on care processes deals with a fictional patient, deciding where they would go within the healthcare system and identifying how care could be better integrated. The Continuous Quality Improvement session is about helping participants to take their new knowledge into their clinical settings to effect positive changes.

A request in 2009 by South Lake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket, Ontario provided an opportunity to pilot the program. The Centre was attracted by the practice descriptions in the BC Competency Framework for Interprofessional Collaboration upon which the IP-CLS is based. Over the course of a year, the College staff developed each session which the institution then piloted, with two months between each workshop.

The workshop series was completed by the Fraser Health Authority (FHA) in June, 2011, and is currently being used by the Interior Health Authority (IHA). The IP-CLS materials are being used in conjunction with other professional development programs in the Northern Health Authority and for rural preceptor development.

While the facilitators have received a very positive response to the IP-CLS to date, they hope to gain greater insight into its impact from a longitudinal evaluation.

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DIVISION OF HEALTH CARE COMMUNICATION

Where is the patient’s voice in health professionals’ education? The Health Mentors Program, which was

introduced in September, 2011, places the patient right into the curriculum of six health disciplines. In a

reversal of the traditional “outreach” to patients, the “in-reach” approach makes the client the teacher in

recognition of their expertise in their own care.

“ Every health profession espouses a philosophy of patient–centred care. I don’t think it’s possible for students to really learn about delivering patient–centred care unless the patients’ voice is heard in the education program.”

“Every health profession espouses a philosophy of patient–centred care. I don’t think it’s possible for students to really learn about delivering patient–centred care unless the patients’ voice is heard in the education program,” believes Dr. Angela Towle, Co–Director of the Division of Health Care Communication.

Funded by the College of Health Disciplines and by UBC students through the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF) the pilot credit course connects volunteer dental, medical, nursing, occupational therapy, pharmacy and physical therapy students to clients with chronic conditions for 16 months. Approximately 100 students—up to 20 from each discipline—started the program this year. The “community educators” have typically lived with a range of illnesses such as diabetes, cancer and arthritis for several years. A key to the success of the program is the network of eight community organizations including the Epilepsy Society, Canadian Mental Health Association and others which have recruited the clients.

The mentors program is a natural outgrowth of the Patient and Community Voices Project, which has run 14 workshops attended by 185 students from 17 disciplines since 2008.

The workshops have produced some intriguing insights. For instance, the level of the students’ education was not important: from 1st year pharmacy to post-graduate medicine, students discovered positive benefits learning from the client. Students were also very comfortable asking clients’ questions. In the process, they moved beyond having a stereotype of an illness to viewing the patient as a whole with a health condition.

“I was in the discussion about epilepsy. I had thought I was quite well informed but I found that I really wasn’t which made me think that if I wasn’t, what is it like for other students?” states Ella Ferman, a social work student, who participated in one of the workshops.

The late John Lewis of the Scleroderma Society of BC said, “I think we’ve finally got a working arrangement where the academics are talking to the community and listening to our feedback. If we can use that avenue to go back and forth with the students, it would be great.”

Measuring the effectiveness of the program is a long term research goal. Dr. Towle and Co-Director Dr. William Godolphin are currently applying for funding to explore the long term outcomes in clinical practice.

For more information on the activities of the DHCC visit www.chd.ubc.ca/dhcc

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The Summer Science Program at the Institute for Aboriginal Health (IAH) grew from the Health Careers

Program which began 23 years ago. It aims to excite First Nations high school students about the

possibilities of pursuing careers in the health sciences. Students come from all over the province, including

remote Aboriginal communities, to live on campus for a week and explore the opportunities available in

UBC’s undergraduate programs. One program is for Grades 9 and 10 students, another for those in Grades

11 and 12. On average, 20 students participate in each program and 80% of them have chosen careers they

would like to study.

“ We need students in population health. Many researchers are doing research on us but it is not being done with us.”

INSTITUTE FOR ABORIGINAL HEALTH

Students are introduced to the concept of holistic health while touring the nursing, dentistry, engineering robotics schools and other facilities, with an emphasis on the important contribution that First Nations make to interprofessional education at UBC.

The students meet fellow First Nations members, including taking part in a talking circle with elders and being introduced to Salish culture by guest speakers at the UBC First Nations Longhouse. They also attend a lecture on math skills given by Dr. Rahael Jalaan, the Aboriginal Education Coordinator for the Pacific Institute for Mathematical Sciences who provides an Indigenous perspective on math.

Many Native high school students face significant challenges graduating from high school with the necessary math and science courses to enter the university’s health science programs. However, once at UBC, most students thrive academically.

The award-winning Aboriginal Health and Community Administration Certificate Program (AHCACP) brings a wide range of community reserve workers to the Institute five times over a year to improve their administrative skills in areas such as finance and human resources and provide interprofessional community health education. Typical participants include health nurses, alcohol counsellors and health program administrators. More than 120 students, including 23 in the 2010–2011 year have graduated from AHCACP. The program has received the Canadian Award for Program Excellence and the Outstanding Non-Credit Program Award from the University Continuing Education Association in the U.S. AHCACP graduates will also have the option to complete a Master’s degree in the School of Population and Public Health. “We need students in population health. Many researchers are doing research on us but it is not being done with us,” says Dr. Lee Brown, Director of IAH. “Several hundred research projects are being carried out at UBC.” The Institute holds an Aboriginal Research Forum every two months for researchers to present their projects and receive feedback with a Native perspective.

For further information on the Institute’s activities, visit www.iah.ubc.ca

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CHD NETWORK

Interprofessional Education & Practice

Health Care Communication

Counselling PsychologyDental Hygiene

Clinical PsychologyFood, Nutrition &

Health

Midwifery

Social Work

Government

National Partners

NursingMedicine

Dentistry

Genetic Counselling

Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy

BC Post-Secondary Sector

International Organizations

BC Academic Health Council

Health Authorities

Audiology & Speech Sciences

Kinesiology

Physical Therapy

Institute For Aboriginal Health

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THE COLLEGE OF HEALTH DISCIPLINES

From left to right: Guan Wang, IT Manager, Systems and Security; John Cheng, Web Technology and Communications Manager; May Lam, College Event Coordinator/Reception.

From left to right: Julie Berthin, Research Assistant, Health Care Communication; William (Bill) Godolphin, Co-Director, Health Care Communication; Leslie Soon, IHHS Program Assistant; Kiri Chanwai, Research Manager, Institute for Aboriginal Health; Cathy Kline, Research Coordinator, Health Care Communication.

From bottom left to right: Lesley Bainbridge, Associate Principal; Angela Towle, Co-Director, Health Care Communication; Maureen Dunn, Administrator; Louise Nasmith, Principal;

Top left to right: Shafik Dharamsi, Lead Faculty for Student Engagement; Lee Brown, Director, Institute for Aboriginal Health.

From left to right: Victoria Wood, Project Manager; Lynda Eccott, Director Curriculum; Ruth Smith, Executive Coordinator; Christie Newton, Director Professional Development; Kerrie Charnley, Education Coordinator, Institute for Aboriginal Health; Carrie DePalma, Curriculum Coordinator; Val Ball, Research Coordinator.

Missing from photos: Teresa Howell, Research Manager, Institute for Aboriginal Health – On leave; Donna Drynan, Director, Practice Education.

Below from left to right: Anita Ho, Secretary to the Director, Institute for Aboriginal Health; Elaine Alpert, Adjunct Professor; Sita MacMillan, Aboriginal Admissions Officer, Institute for Aboriginal Health; Juliet Ho, Administrative Assistant.

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ANNUAL AWARDS

McCreary Prize Named after Dr. John F. McCreary, UBC’s first Coordinator of Health Sciences, the McCreary Prize is awarded to an individual or group exemplifying interprofessional teamwork.

BC Health Legacy Award This prize recognizes significant contributions to health policy, leadership or governance in BC.

First Nations Scholarship Through the Institute for Aboriginal Health, this award is given to a First Nations health/human services program student who demonstrates academic scholarship and leadership skills in an Aboriginal community.

John H.V. Gilbert Interprofessional Scholarship This scholarship is awarded to an outstanding student leader in patient–centred practice, following their penultimate year of study.

Jessie MacCarthy Scholarship The student recipient of this award demonstrates academic excellence and leadership in community health.

Through our annual awards, we recognize outstanding students, faculty

and practitioners who exemplify interprofessional health, education and research.

Harold F. and Anne Bedner UPHILL Scholarship in Health Sciences This award is given to a female aboriginal student in any year of undergraduate or graduate study, in any health sciences program.

Award for Outstanding Leadership in Advancing Interprofessional Education and Professional Development This award recognizes an individual or team from a community, hospital or university–based setting who have made a unique contribution to collaborative teaching and/or patient–centred practice.

Practice Education Team Award This prize is given to a health care team demonstrating outstanding ability to teach interprofessional competencies to students at the pre–entry to practice level.

Award for Excellence in Interprofessional Education Teaching Awarded to a faculty or non–faculty instructor teaching an IPE course for a minimum of two years, this prize recognizes a commitment to interprofessional learning.

Heather Kent, Editorial Consultant | Writer

Nadia Picco, Design and Print Page 13 CHD photos: Janis Franklin, Photographer Media Group, University of British Columbia

© College of Health Disciplines, The University of British Columbia