News

Kyle is an 8-year old patient who ended up seriously ill in hospital because he refused to take his asthma medication.  The reasons are complicated, but bullying at school was one factor, and tension at home was another.  The question for Kyle’s health care team:  how to send him back home and back to school safely?

Kyle is fictitious but the scenario is a realistic one.  It was part of the Health Care Team Challenge© on January 21st involving 36 Dalhousie students from the Faculties of Health Professions, Medicine and Dentistry. This was the second year for the Health Care Team Challenge, organized by Dalhousie and the IWK Health Care Centre.  The competition is both fun and serious:   six teams were vying for a spot at the national HCTC championships based on their ability to work together collaboratively across professions to develop a patient plan.  There was some advance work, however the main part of the competition consisted of the teams being given 90 minutes to talk over Kyle’s case, agree on a treatment plan, and present it to the judges.

“I think it’s fantastic!  It’s very exciting to see people in the undergraduate world working together. I hope the teams take away the idea that they are more than the sum of their parts,” says Kathy Johnston, one of the coordinators of the Challenge from the IWK.

Meeting unexpected challenges

There were a few surprises during the challenge.  While each team was huddled together in separate rooms, phantom judges suddenly walked in and listened to the conversations, evaluating how well individual team members were working together.  As the teams raced the clock to finalize their plans, suddenly another surprise:  they were given a lightweight stick, and told to lower it to the ground as a team, each person balancing part of the stick on one finger.  In spite of repeated tries, and plenty of lively discussion, it was a tough problem to solve in the short time provided—and that made it a good learning experience.

“I was impressed with how well we worked together,” says Izaak McLaughlin, a respiratory therapy student.  McLaughlin felt his team excelled in case planning for the patient, but struggled with the stick exercise. “If I could do it again, I think I might suggest we listen more and have a designated decision-maker!”

Although set up as a competition, the Health Care Team Challenge is designed to get students in the health professions to practice working together in situations similar to those they will face some day in the health care system.  It’s just one of the opportunities for interprofessional education offered at Dalhousie.

“It’s fun working together.  I learned a lot about the other professions and how we each overlap,” says Heather Webster, a Health Administration student who recruited her team to compete in the Challenge.

At the end of the competition the teams were judged on how well they met four criteria:  their oral presentation, their written submission, how well they worked together as judged by the phantom judges, and how well they dealt with the stick exercise.  After a tough competition Team 4 was declared the winner by the twelve judges.   Members of the team are Connor Bray, Nursing; Kathleen MacMillan, Pharmacy; Kate Palkovits, Nursing; Drew Rajaraman, Medicine; and Yaeesh Sardiwalla, Medicine.  The team will represent Dalhousie at the upcoming National Health Care Team Challenge, to be held at Dalhousie in March.  The Health Care Team Challenge is now part of interprofessional health education at universities across Canada and internationally.

More photos from the Health Care Team Challenge

Photos - Ellie Salsbury and Kathryn Morse (stick challenge photo).