Interprofessional Structured Communication

In this activity, one or more students from different professions conduct an interview with a patient/client to listen to their story of their interactions with multiple health, social care and/or other human services professionals.

Time Commitment

Minutes

Learning Outcomes

Express professional opinions competently, confidently, and respectfully avoiding discipline specific language
Plan patient/client care goals and priorities with involvement of other health, social care and/or human services professionals
Identify opportunities to enhance the care of patients/clients through the involvement of other health, social care and/or human services professionals
Recognise and resolve disagreements in relation to patient/client care that arise from different disciplinary perspectives
Give timely, sensitive, instructive feedback to colleagues from other professions, and respond respectfully to feedback from these colleagues

Task Guidelines

This activity requires student pairs from different professions to use a structured format to communicate with one another. For example, conducting a handover or making a referral or recommendation. Students then provide constructive feedback to each other.

Examples

Patient/client being discharged to a new facility
recommending a particular intervention/change in services
concern about a patient/client’s condition
reporting at a case conference/multidisciplinary team meeting
ensuring an agreed approach for coordinating care with new service provider/s. The ISBAR tool may be used in clinical contexts (ISBAR = Identify, Situation, Background, Assessment and Recommendation), another relevant structured communication tool may be used in non-clinical or community contexts.

Prior to the communcation

Familiarise yourself with workplace structured communication approaches (e.g. ISBAR).

Review the patient/client records of case. Using the workplace set structure, extract what information you require to make your communication to the other profession.

During the communcation

See Worksheet for activity guidelines.

After the communcation

After both students have completed a communication and worked through all questions on the worksheet, reflect on:

What worked well in the communication process?
What could have been improved?
What you would do differently next time?

Refer back to the learning outcomes for this activity for prompts to help answer the above questions.

Ensure the worksheet is complete, you have discussed it with your supervisor, and you complete any necessary administration (e.g. supervisor signature) for your portfolio or placement assessment.