Clair Zawada
Birmingham City University, UK
Title: Bringing students together with Inter-Professional Learning (IPL)
Biography
Biography: Clair Zawada
Abstract
The Faculty of Health, Education & Life Sciences recently hosted their 2nd Interprofessional Learning (IPL) conference, designed to enable students and staff to learn with and from each other. The conference runs across a nominated week, and programme teams from across the Faculty offer sessions that are delivered to students within their curriculum, but may be of interest to staff / students from other disciplines. All students and staff within the Faculty are able to register for as many sessions as they would like to attend.
The Faculty provides a wide range of courses, such as Nursing, Midwifery, Radiography, Social Work, Medical Ultrasound, Sports Sciences and Teacher Training. This enables a variety of sessions to be offered, such as ‘tackling homophobia in children’, ‘recognising and reacting to the choking child’, ‘have a go at laparoscopy’, understanding an ECG’, ‘Yoga’ and bringing down a hanging body’.
Each session is open to all within the Faculty. For students this enables interprofessional interaction and the opportunity for learning from a different perspective. Students can learn about the professional background of the session provider, and appreciate the role and expertise of different professional groups. Staff have the opportunity to network, experience different teaching sessions and gain ideas for curriculum development and inter-Faculty working.
This paper will describe the IPL conference, the logistics of organisation and how it is embedded into the timetables. Evaluations from staff and students will be discussed, as well as the lessons that have been learned and changes that will be made and taken forward.
The conference has the potential to offer students an extra-curricular learning experience and an increased sense of belonging to the wider Faculty. Students experience a diversity of backgrounds in attending the IPL conference, which increases satisfaction from the additional opportunities made available.