Abstract

Background/Rationale: This workshop will equip the audience with an understanding of how interprofessional mental health simulation can be used to improve the care and experience of patients with mental health needs across health care settings, particularly given the contemporary context of increasing fragmentation of healthcare services and poor collaborative practice among professionals.

Interprofessional simulation (IPS) has been shown to improve collaborative practice by providing participants with the skills, knowledge and attitudes required to work effectively with other colleagues across disciplines. This concept is particularly relevant to patients with both mental and physical health care needs. By involving both mental health professionals and professionals from other medical specialties in IPS, educators are able to promote collaborative, patient-centred practice for this demographic. In particular, IPS seeks to explore how team-working, communication, and conflict resolution can be improved in groups that work together, while also aiming to clarify roles and responsibilities, improve professionals’ attitudes towards one another and promote the desire to embody interprofessional practice in one’s working life.

A description of what will happen during the workshop, with emphasis on interactive components:

The workshop will begin with an introductory plenary including both didactic components examining the design and development of IPS scenarios for mental health as well as video examples. Through facilitated discussions, the workshop will invite participants to consider how they might use IPS for mental health in their own settings.

Through small group interactive tasks, the workshop will support participants to begin to develop ideas for IPS scenarios, as well as to develop learning objectives and scenario stems. The various educational considerations and barriers to implementing such scenarios will be explored, and participants will be given helpful tips for addressing some of the difficulties they may encounter. In addition, guidance on a debrief model that can be applied to IPS to promote learning will be provided. 

Learning Objectives:

By the end of the workshop participants will be able to:

1. Describe how to design interprofessional simulation scenarios around mental health;

2. Describe the components of a debrief model for use with interprofessional mental health simulation scenarios