Fabulous article on the Port McNeil IRPbc Team!

You may have been in the Port McNeill medical clinic, hospital or pharmacy recently and noticed a few new faces shadowing the regular healthcare professionals. Port Hardy, Alert Bay, Sointula and other places on the North Island have also seen these new faces. So just who are they and why are they following around the healthcare professionals of our area?

These new people are students that are part of a province wide program called the Interprofessional Rural Program of BC – or IRPbc for short. Port McNeill is again participating in the program this year drawing together students from six health disciplines – nursing, medicine, physiotherapy, social work, midwifery, and pharmacy. This interprofessional team serves as the framework for the program.

Is IECPCP Really Just Good Manners?

An Editorial by Lesley Bainbridge, UBC College of Health Disciplines

My interest in interprofessional collaborative practice stems back a long way to my days as a clinician. When working with the frail elderly, we had an amazing team comprising medicine, nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, social work, pharmacy, psychology, psychiatry, nutrition, music therapy, pastoral care, recreation and I’m sure there were more. We met formally and informally. We loved the residents. We had fun. We  were all competent in our own professions and comfortable in our professional skins.  And, we were polite to each other. 

Food for Thought

“Croakey: The Crikey Health Blog” has just posted an op-ed entitled “Some thorny questions on home medicine reviews, medical publishing and other matters” which has some interesting observations including a bit of a discussion about collaborative practice and some thought-provoking comments by Ann Larson.

Join CIHC Mainstream!

Just a reminder that CIHC Mainstream has launched and we’re interested in including anyone in the practice community who wants to get involved in moving interprofessional collaboration forward in the workplace.  We’re in the process of setting up some small groups focusing on topics health practitioners have told us are important to them – developing networks, sharing success (and failure) stories and advising the CIHC Steering Committee on how to make  collaborative practice the norm in the practice environment.  If you’re interested in learning more, see the Mainstream page of our website http://www.cihc.ca/regional/mainstream or contact the CIHC Communications Director at communications@cihc.ca.

Become a fan: CIHC on Facebook

In addition to our Twitter account, CIHC also has a fan page on Facebook! This page will be used primarily to give periodic updates about the best and brightest news that CIHC has to offer. We are simply trying to spread the word about CIHC and Interprofessional Practice as far and wide as we can.

If you or anyone else you know is using Facebook, please visit our page and become a fan of interprofessional care!

Physician Assistants – Controversy & Collaboration

Ontario is running a pilot project to see if physician assistants might help alleviate some of the pressures on physicians and nurses within the healthcare system.  A number of the new PAs are working on interprofessional teams.  The Toronto Star recently ran an article on the pluses and minuses of adding this new profession.   Read the article here http://www.thestar.com/living/article/682414

What do you think?  Are we ready to add this new profession?   Is it realistic that other professions are worrying about protecting their scope of practice?  Is there room for everyone to collaborate?

CIHC Library: Patient-based case studies

Over the past week or two, we’ve received a couple questions from project managers looking for resources on patient experiences with interprofessional care, and any case studies that are available for viewing in the library. We answered back individually (and you’re always welcome to inquire about library resources by emailing library@cihc.ca), but then thought it might be a good idea to blog a few of the answers, in the case of future requests.

One good place to start any interprofessional search would be two literature reviews that we received from Scott Reeves. One is an environmental scan and literature review for all types of collaborative practice settings, and the other reviews solely primary care settings.

New at the Library: Yukon Territories Community

Lesley Bainbridge at the College of Health Disciplines recently submitted a large body of work that has been published for the advancement of Interprofessional Practice! We are very excited to make these materials available in the CIHC Library, and they have already been a great addition to the Library resource pool.

You can browse the collection here!

CIHC Goes To The Birds

That’s right, we’ve joined Twitter! Beginning this week, CIHC will be Tweeting up a storm. If you’re a current Twitterer, feel free to follow us. If not, what are you waiting for? Join up today to receive short (140 character limit) updates on what’s going on!

See our updates at www.twitter.com/CIHC_ca

IRPbc Student Featured in BC Newspaper

Peter Au (l) a student between his second and third year of medical school at UBC, confers with Clearwater medical doctor John Soles last week in the local clinic. Au is in the community as part of the annual Rural Family Practice Clerkship.  Photo by Keith McNeill

Clearwater might have need of more doctors but it isn’t becausethe community has not been doing its part to help train physicians in rural medicine.

This month Dr. Helmcken Memorial Hospital and the local Medical Clinic are once again hosting a UBC medical student.

“It’s been going on since I’ve been here, except we missed a year in 2003 during the fires,” said local medical doctor John Soles.

This year’s student is Peter Au. Born in China, he lived nearly all his life in Edmonton before going to UBC to study. He just finished his second year of medical school.