Exploring Interdisciplinary Team Function Through a Classroom Case Study

• In Event: 77.031 - Teamwork and Leadership

Abstract

Interprofessional education and collaborative practice across health professions can be described by the Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative (CIHC) competency framework. Based off this framework, the course Building Better Together (BBT) aims to develop interprofessional skills by partnering occupational therapy and engineering students in an academic setting. The objective of this study was to explore interdisciplinary team function using the role clarification competency of the CIHC framework in a case study using teams formed in BBT. Two team’s data was analyzed to determine facilitators and inhibitors to team functioning, which were grouped under six emergent themes. Collaboration was the critical theme for effective interdisciplinary team functioning when considering role clarification and the occurrence of inhibitors had a higher impact than facilitators.

Authors

• Katherine VanTil, Queen's University

• Eryn Young, Queen's University - Kingston

• Theresa Claire Davies, Queen's University

• Catherine Donnelly