Endocrine Abstracts

Modern healthcare requires effective multidisciplinary working: it is fundamental to modern professionalism, helps to ensure patient safety, supports efficient use of resources, and underpins patient safety. Through the mediating effect of improving the quality of working lives, it may also reduce burnout and staff turnover. So how do practitioners learn to collaborate effectively and to challenge poor collaboration?

I will examine the evidence base for interprofessional collaboration (IPC) and interprofessional education (IPE) and, mainly drawing upon examples from my own IPC/IPE research programme, I will present insights into the nature of interprofessional learning through and for multidisciplinary working. Many examples will focus learning through simulated professional practice with the objective of enhancing patient safety. I define simulation broadly to encompass a spectrum from very simple role play activities or rehearsal of basic psychomotor tasks, right through to high fidelity multidisciplinary simulations in real or simulated clinical environments. I will introduce the educational concept of disjuncture and argue that debriefing is as important as the simulation itself (in fact, possibly more important).