I was at the third appointment. The first was the evaluation; the second is where we really provided the care plan with Dr. Hull; the third one is hopefully after some of those appointments have taken place. I think that third appointment is actually really crucial from the student’s perspective because it reflects a lot of the suggestions that we've made, and we were able to hear some of the things she already started doing.
How did that feel to actually hear she'd followed through on some of your suggestions?
In some ways, gratifying, but also humbling, because, especially as students, I think there is still the idea that we're learning. We don't know a lot of things. We know some things, but not a lot, so for her to be willing to listen to us…
I went to the second visit, and discussed OMT with her and discussed why our team thought that it would be valuable. I had to explain why it would be helpful and why we thought she should go see an OMT specialist, and not just for one appointment. It was humbling to recognize that in the future we'll be doing that every single day with most of our patients. At the same time, as students learning how to have these kind of conversations, having opportunity to educate the patient, and having them actually follow through.
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What would you say was the value of having the two interdisciplinary teams debrief afterward?
The last meeting we had both groups came together and each gave a case or patient presentation. They had a lot of similar experiences from what I remember, which was also pretty amazing. Both of our patients, who are totally different, were able to really buy into the treatments. You have to come together as a team, and even though each profession has a different thought process and perspective, you have to combine all that into one patient care plan.
How is working with an interprofessional team different?
In my experiences in hospitals, I've seen social work primary through the crisis counselors. Working with actual students in social work for this experience gave me a really good perspective, and again, the humbling perspective that we have all these ideas in medicine, and in OT, PT, nursing. They have very similar perspectives to physicians… they're different, but there's a lot of medical attention in how to treat a
Brett Armstrong, COM ’22 in his role as narrator, along with the rest of his interprofessional team during the IPEC Poster Session skit