On Tuesday I went to a seminar that addressed quality of life for those suffering from feeding, eating and swallowing issues. The seminar featured leading experts in the field of nutrition, dental hygiene, occupational therapy and speech language pathology. The session too place at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health at UBC. The panel discussed their individual roles within their respective professions as well as their roles as part of an interdisciplinary team. During the informal discussion, each panel member shared how they became involved in eating, feeding and swallowing, and they also shared some experiences they have had within their respective professions. The panel included Jan Duivestein, and Occupational Therapist and instructor at UBC, Kathryn Wishart, a Speech Language Pathologist, Nishi LalBirdi, a Dental Hygenist and Peter Lam, a  Registered Dietitian. After the introductions and brief chat about eating, feeding and swallowing, we all participated in a case study that had us work in groups with students from other healthcare professions. The case was about a man who had been involved in an electrical accident and what his immediate care issues were as well as out team’s care plan for him.

I really liked that there was a dietitian on the panel for this event because it allowed me to actively think about where I would fit in an interdisciplinary team such as this one. It was helpful that each panel member discussed their specific roles within the framework of eating, feeding and swallowing, because hearing what the dietitian is responsible for in comparison to the rest of the healthcare professionals allowed to me recognize  the importance of each role. After initially reading the case, the panel members got together and discussed what they would do, as did we in our specific groups. Listening to the panel share their steps in working through the care plan was interesting, because there were some similarities to what we would have done, as well as differences. What struck me was that the panel was very candid about discussing the fact that there are often disagreements and arguments within an inter professional team, and I think that this was a valuable discussion to have. While it is certainly important to be confident in your skills and experiences within your field, I can imagine that, as a professional within a group of other professionals, disagreements happen frequently.

When we started with the case study it was initially a little intimidating since there were students from so many backgrounds such as nursing, occupational therapy (OT), speech language pathology (SLP), audiology and dental hygiene. I was quite quiet at first while the group discussed possible ideas for the patient’s care plan, and there were a lot of ideas put forward as to what would be the most important initial treatment. I became more comfortable as the discussion went on, and it was really interesting to practice putting my experience into a plan.  Although I still have a lot of learning to do in the field of healthcare and dietetics, I felt as if I was able to contribute.

In my group I was the only Dietetic student, but there were many others involved with the event on different teams. It was interesting to hear the ideas put forth by other Dietetics students, and many of them were similar to what I had suggested. Overwhelmingly I found that our collective priority was to ensure that the patient was maintaining adequate nourishment during his treatment. This may seem obvious, but in my own group adequate nutrition and food intake was much less of a discussion among the other healthcare students, so it was reassuring to hear that other dietetic students were thinking along the same lines as me. It was also quite educational to hear what other healthcare students would do with this case, and I think one of the most valuable lessons to come from the activity was to learn how to bring all the different ideas together into a coherent and successful care plan that was patient-centered. I think that my group did that well, considering we are all still learners. Having the panel of professionals explain their action plan gave us all a point of references for improvement and growth.

I am quite happy with what I learned at this IP education session; it is remarkable what you can pack into 1 hour of learning. I felt that the hour was very organized and flowed very nicely given the amount of information that was shared. There is still a lot of learning I have to do and questions that need to be answered by my future experiences. For example, knowing what the general order is of creating a care plan, and which professionals make the first decisions. I know many questions will be answered in my future years of school and into my internship, but I think it’s also important to realize that not every question will have been answered by the time I am a working professional in the field of Dietetics, but that is ok.