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Introduction

Inter Professional Education - Reflective Essay For first year inter professional education, the task was to design a poster based on a case study of a person who has one or more medical conditions. The poster had to explain what various members of a multi-disciplinary team would do for the person, and was to be targeted at a certain audience, for example health -care workers, people who have the same medical conditions or family members of these people. Our case study focused on Joe, a man with schizophrenia and diabetes. We decided a design for our poster would include a photograph of ourselves (Joe's team) and part written by each member of the team around the photo. We would also include an introduction by Joe's sister explaining the situation. This essay will reflect on the process that we went through during the making of the poster, and what went well and what the difficulties there were in making it. The scheduled classes for IPE took place in October, but the poster was not to be finished until April. We were organised into groups, it was our responsibility to organise meetings in order to design and produce the poster. ...read more.

Middle

I also felt that at times it was difficult to arrange meeting which suited everyone as people were reluctant to come into university on days when they had no timetabled classes, therefore there were very few times which were suitable for everyone. Meetings were also quite difficult to arrange as people did not want to commit to other work during the exam period and also people had placements so were unavailable for most of this time. An important part of the task involved working in a team and in our team we all took on roles. I think that I took on a mostly organisational role in terms of the fact that I took responsibility for organising a lot of the meetings, especially in the beginning when we were unsure of what to do. Other members of the team took on more of a leadership role as they tended to direct what happened at the meetings and made most of the decisions regarding what work was to be done and who would do it. At meetings I took a quieter role but still participated in all the discussions and took part in all decisions about what was to be included in the poster and its design. ...read more.

Conclusion

In some ways this was good as it allowed us to think about other things, but it might have been a good option to think of other ideas in case we thought of a better idea. In order to think about my experience while making this poster and to reflect on this I used the reflective cycle by Gibbs (1988). I think that this was a worthwhile and helpful thing as it helped me plan the essay and also to gather my thoughts about the experience in general and what I have learned. Another useful tool for reflection was Queen Margaret's ePortfolio tool as I was able to use this like a diary to keep a note at what happened at each meeting and to use as a point of reference. In conclusion, I think that IPE has been a very positive experience for me. It has allowed me to gain an insight into what other health care professionals do and also provided me with a good opportunity to work in a team and see the difficulties that occur. I also found the task useful as it allowed me to research what the multidisciplinary team does in a community mental health setting, as this was something I had no previous experience of. Overall I enjoyed the IPE experience and I think that I contributed well to the task. ...read more.

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our University Degree Healthcare section.