Kent, East Surrey & Sussex Workforce Development Confederation
Canterbury Christ Church University
Preamble
Canterbury Christ Church University has been running a successful inter-professional masters programme for health and social care practitioners since 1992 and, in September 2000, we launched a pre-registration shared learning degree programme for diagnostic radiographers, occupational therapists, adult nurses and midwives. A fifth pathway, child nursing, was added in 2001. The present programme has inter-professional learning opportunities in all three years but this is confined to the University based elements of the degree.
The programme is being redeveloped from September 2004 to incorporate pathways in mental health nursing, physiotherapy and social work. A decision has also been taken to develop a single, modular framework in the Faculty of Health to encompass all pre-registration education activity at both diploma and degree level. Thus it is intended to embed shared learning across within all of the Faculty's programmes.
The University has a purpose designed, inter-professional skills laboratory, but a review of the present programme suggests that the time is right to extend inter-professional learning into the practice environment. A successful bid was developed to become a 'first wave' site for the modernisation of allied health professions education, focussing specifically on practice learning and collaboration between agencies and other HEIs. The University has established links with the Universities of Kent and Brighton and is actively building on these to promote inter-professional education.
Purpose
The purpose of the Department of Health funded project is to embed inter-professional practice based education into the curriculum of the redeveloped shared learning degree programme.
Project Objectives
To develop a framework for delivering and supporting effective, inter-professional, competence based student learning which enables them to learn together with staff from the spectrum of professions which they will encounter and which is sufficiently flexible and accessible to enable the widest possible participation.
To develop a work based learning programme for staff supporting multi-professional practice placements.
Key Considerations
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Multi-professional placements should be relevant to participating students.
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The framework must articulate with the subject benchmarks (academic and practitioner standards) for all the participating professional groups.
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Learning environments should encompass a full range of health and social care settings.
4. The project should be able to link with programmes from other HEIs.
Proposed Methodology
A participatory action research methodology is proposed using a number of action research cycles, focusing initially on;
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Evaluation of practice learning settings where students from different professions share a placement but have different learning agreements and practice outcomes. The purpose of this is to explore perceptions of practitioners and students about placement 'sharing'.
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A mapping exercise between the different external reference standards of participating professions, looking for shared common and collaborative learning opportunities to inform placement learning outcomes.
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The opportunistic placement of small, inter-professional groups of students from the present programme in team settings, e.g. CART team, PCT, Learning Disabilities Team, Cancer Centre.
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Using information gained from 1,2 & 3 above to pilot inter-professional placements for students in a planned way in 2003/4. The plan is to try to define achievable practice outcomes, distinguishing generic (key) skills from service and profession specific skills in relation to the placement setting and identify and evaluate practice learning.
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Identifying practitioners' training needs to develop an inter-professional mentor support package.
Project Lead
For more information please contact Hazel Colyer, Project Director, on 01227 782535