The Dalhousie Health Mentors Program builds on a long history of interprofessional health education initiatives by introducing students in health and social care professions to chronic conditions and disabilities, patient/client-centredness, interprofessional learning, and team functioning. This large interprofessional education program (16 participating programs, 650 students) connects interprofessional student teams with Health Mentors, who are adult volunteers with chronic conditions, for a learning experience that extends over one academic year. Students explore their mentor's life story and chronic condition journey, the impact the condition has had on her/his life, and her/his experience with health care in general and interprofessional collaboration in particular. All aspects of the program planning, management, implementation, and evaluation have been interprofessional in nature. Lessons have been learned regarding.
A variety of stakeholders, including students, faculty, educational institutions and the broader health care and social service communities, work behind-the-scenes to support interprofessional education initiatives. While program designers are faced with multiple challenges associated with implementing and sustaining such programs, little has been written about how program designers practice the interprofessional competencies that are expected of students. This brief report describes the backstage collaboration underpinning the Dalhousie Health Mentors Program, a large and complex pre-licensure interprofessional experience connecting student teams with community volunteer mentors who have chronic conditions to learn about interprofessional collaboration and patient/client-centered care. Based on our experiences, we suggest that just as students are required to reflect on collaborative processes, interprofessional program designers should examine the ways in which they work together and take into consideration the impact this has on the delivery of the educational experience.
Providing individualized developmental assessment and consultation to parents of well children fosters healthy parenting behavior and provides useful information about enrichment techniques. This article describes the Develo mental Enrichment Clinic which was implemented in 1983 at McLaren General Hospital in Flint, Michigan. Information about the program's philosophy, frame of reference and services is provided. Occupational therapists with expertise and interest in pediatrics can broaden their skills to benefit the well population, thus creating a niche for themselves in the wellness movement.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.