Description of the Experience
Give Kids a Smile, February 2019, Pacific University, Hillsboro Campus. On that day, we saw a pediatric population, and the members involved in the team were Dental Hygiene, Optometry, and Audiology. I have much appreciated how this annual event started as a capstone project and was able to grow. My specific role in this event was to follow a child throughout all of the different health professions that they needed to see. In addition, I was the student clinician who performed the child’s hearing screening tests, which included: otoscopy, tympanometry, otoacoustic emissions, and a four-frequency pure tone screening evaluation.
Interprofessional Competencies
After completing this experience, I am able to:
- 1. Values and Ethics: VE6. Develop a trusting relationship with patients, families, and other team members (CIHC, 2010).
- Roles and Responsibilities: RR1. Communicate one’s roles and responsibilities clearly to patients, families, community members, and other professionals.
- Roles and Responsibilities: RR8. Engage in continuous professional and interprofessional development to enhance team performance and collaboration.
Reflection
Interprofessional collaborative practice: “When multiple health workers from different professional backgrounds work together with patients, families, [careers], and communities to deliver the highest quality of care.” (WHO 2010). This experience allowed me to not only observe other professionals but teach them and also the patient and his immediate and extended family. I had the opportunity to follow the case of a child and his mother and other extended family members through all the necessary appointments for the day. The family and clinicians were both parts of the local community yet vastly different. Throughout the process, we were able to engage with a variety of student clinicians of different ethnicities and also the family being of a different ethnicity than the student clinicians. To my knowledge, none of the providers were of the same ethnic background, yet all provided the highest quality of care with the patient’s best interest and culture in mind.
1. Values and Ethics: VE6, Develop a trusting relationship with patients, families, and other team members (CIHC, 2010). During this experience, I was afforded the opportunity to have direct contact with not only the patient, but their immediate family, and other team members as well. I did my best to build rapport with the family and child at the beginning of the day, while we were in the waiting room, and I believe that helped with the rest of the day. I was able to communicate my role in the whole process and direct question to other health professionals when out of my scope of practice. At one point during the hygiene appointment, the mother asked to step outside of the room and make a couple of phone calls, at that point I had felt I had built a trusting relationship with a person, who was a stranger a couple of hours prior for her to leave myself and the dental hygiene student in the room while she was not in a direct line of sight of her child. I believe building that rapport in the beginning and throughout the appointment afforded me the opportunity to have this one-on-one time with the patient while their mother made some phone calls. Although I do not know the dynamic of the family, for a mother to leave her seven-year-old child with people whom she met that day, I believe a decent amount of trust had to have been built between us.
2. Roles and Responsibilities: RR1. Communicate one’s roles and responsibilities clearly to patients, families, community members, and other professionals. Upon the assessment of the child auditory function, I was able to switch roles as just following the child around throughout his other appointments and building rapport to being a student clinician. After explaining the instructions of my testing and screening procedures to the child, I asked if they had any questions to which they said no. However, the patient’s mother and other students observing also had questions that I was able to effectively answer about our testing procedures with minor clarifying follow-up questions. This gave me the opportunity to further my trust and relationship with the patient, family, and other student clinicians participating in the event.
3. Roles and Responsibilities: RR8. Engage in continuous professional and interprofessional development to enhance team performance and collaboration. Throughout the day, I was able to develop more and more relationships with different professions. As I had more time to reflect and learn new procedures from different professions, I was able to ask more questions. This fostered both my professional and interprofessional development. I feel as if our collaboration was very nice and effective for the patient during the event. However, I was able to maintain these interprofessional relationships and reach out during the semester for guidance on topics in my other interprofessional classes as well. I was even able to visit some of the other professions to be their patients, and in return, they came to be a practice patient for my comprehensive exams as well.