Description

Over 100 health care students from various disciplines under the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences participated in four primary health care projects using an interprofessional approach. A cross-departmental FHSS teaching team, including colleagues from School of Nursing, School of Optometry, Applied Social Sciences and Rehabilitation Sciences, worked closely together to develop, plan and implement four interprofessional primary health care projects for three elderly community centres as the clinical practice for FHSS health care students. These projects were implemented and served as co-curricular or extra-curricular activities for students. They provided a community health screening and health promtotion at:

• PolyU Institute of Active Aging for free living elderly
• Wai Ji Christian Services in Un Chau for those with intellectual challenges
• Wai Ji Christian Services in Yuen Long for those with intellectual challenges and 
• Holy Carpenter Elderly Community Centre

The health care assessment procedures were taped and posted on the learning platform Blackboard for health care students to review these procedures at their own time prior to their service day. After the service, students uploaded their reflections and sharings to the platform, and this provided many stories and cases for seminar presentation. 

Due to the success of this pilot project, a new subject was developed for students from other disciplines to work with nursing students to implement school health projects using the interprofessional approach. Some of the team members also submitted a new proposal on using a multidisciplinary team approach. 

Evaluation and Reflection

The predetermined project objectives have all been met with the development of the template for e-learning tools and case studies to sustain the students' exposure to interprofessional care. The impact and deliverables of this interprofessional project have been elaborated previously with e-learning tools template (currently used by SN and SO in BB for other subjects as requested by colleagues) and real life case studies using an interdisciplinary approach for future multidisciplinary projects. Our project team worked diligently to provide skill training lab sessions for over 100 health care students from four different disciplines in the FHSS. The protocol ofthe training session for interdisciplinary collaboration has also been identified. The adoption ofthe WHO's InterprofessionaJ Education (IPE) Competency Checklist to examine the impact of collaborative practice on healthcare students. Interprofessional education is a collaborative approach to develop healthcare students as future interprofessionaJ team members as it provides many active learning activities such as case studies sharing and personal reflections via e-Iearning tools in our Bb through these healthcare students' IPCP primary health care projects. Using the WHO's IPCP competency framework to examine collaborative practice was useful for identifying strength and areas needing improvement based on the research findings ofthe evaluation ofthe impact on healthcare students' IPCP competencies. The interprofessional team is continuing to work together in preparing research proposals and in implementing service-learning subjects using aninterdisciplinary approach. Thus the impact ofthis IPCP projects has also been beneficial to the FHSS academic staff in their research work and clinical practice. It is a win-win project for all the four disciplines within the FHSS with the developed. Our team has set up a good practice model for others to implement similar projects as healthcare organizations are starting to implement collaborative practice to increase the quality ofpatient care. As a health care teaching institution, it is important that PolyU FHSS has implemented this pilot IPCP project as the pioneer and prepared their health care students and academic staff to meet the future challenges in the  health care workforce.