The Partnered Learning Project
IPC Team Resource Kit:
An Aid to Designing and Implementing Interprofessional Collaboration Workshops for Clinical Healthcare Teams
4.0 Workshop Materials
Process | Materials | Experience/Lessons | Ongoing Challenges
A conscious decision was made to not use any technology in the IPC workshop. Technology can be disruptive and inhibit group discussion in a variety of ways. Our alternative was to use laminated posters of key concepts drawn from IPE curriculum. The enabled key ideas and concepts to remain accessible throughout the session. Customized changes that reflected the group’s own conclusions could be layered onto the IPE foundational ideas being discussed. PowerPoint slides were used to produce handouts which included and expanded on the poster materials. Role play materials were customized to each workshop and handed out in paper format at the appropriate point.
Process
- PowerPoint slides were shown during the pilot session but eliminated for the remaining workshops. This change avoided time loss and disruption from working with projection equipment. Our alternative was to use laminated posters that were hung on the walls throughout the session. This approach enabled participants and facilitators to easily refer to at any point during the discussions, helping make explicit the connections between the team’s daily practice and IPE theory and language. Aiding the professionals in recognizing these connections was one of the aims of the workshop. This continuous presence of all key presentation materials also facilitated spontaneous changes to the order in which information was introduced into the discussion, allowing greater responsiveness to comments from participants and acknowledging the team members own knowledge and expertise.
- When teams proposed alternatives to the concepts of language presented in the posters, the facilitators were able to “edit” the poster material with white-board markers to customize the ideas to each team’s reality.
- Two of the posters, considered particularly relevant to established teams, were also produced in the form of a two-sided laminated pocket card. These were distributed during the session.
- Role play was generally not a familiar learning approach for most workshop participants so careful staging of these activities was required. Customized materials to guide participants were specifically designed for each team workshop. These were handed out at the appropriate time. Receiving “new” material at the start of the role play helped draw participants into an activity that we anticipated some would feel uncertainty towards.
- The workshop handout materials included PowerPoint produced handouts, and laminated pocket cards with key IPE and team collaboration concepts from the workshop posters. Blank journals were also given to all workshop participants signifying the learning value of personal reflection.
- Five laminated posters provided visual references to key IPE language and concepts throughout the workshop.
- Flip charts were used to capture team reflections on their own practice. These pages remained on display to serve as additional reference material during the role play and summary discussions.
- Role play script and descriptive materials were produced on paper in a simple, easy to follow format, and distributed as the role play exercises were introduced.
- The poster materials proved very helpful to the facilitators in launching discussion of new ideas and in demonstrating the connections between team discussion points and IPC/IPE concepts. The laminated poster format facilitated excellent discussion as it allowed a “re-writing” of the IPE material into the team’s own terms.
- The value / success of the distribution of personal journals was unclear. At the very least it was a useful educational signal concerning the value of reflection and was helpful as a signal from the PLP study group that the commitment of time by the participants was appreciated.
- The diverse levels of IPC familiarity and accomplishment, among teams and individual participants, presents a learning design challenge. An ongoing program would likely require a curriculum more adapted to different levels of accomplishment and a preliminary assessment of team’s current functioning to appropriately match content to each team.
