Three things I learned at #IPECSpring18
About two weeks ago, I attended my fourth conference of the spring semester – the 2018 Spring Institute of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) held in Washington, DC from April 30 – May 2, 2018. As I was flying home, I tried to reflect on what I had learned at the IPEC Conference as compared to my other three conferences from the semester. Not surprisingly, I struggled to remember the names and even locations of the other three conferences, including one that I attended in mid-April. Even now as write this post in mid-May, my memories of the IPEC conference are fading. Given all the time, energy, and resources that goes into attending a conference, I wondered about what I was learning at all of these conferences, how it was informing my work as a social work educator; and how I might be able to utilize or share my learning with others.
A quick internet search turned up a few articles about the impact of academic conferences on scientific research, professional development of individual academics, and on disciplines as a whole. A blog post by Donald Nicolson, The last great unknown? The impact of academic conferences, offers a good answer to my own questions and proposed another – How do academic conferences make a difference in the lives of academics and wider society? The short answer is we really don’t know, especially in social work education and practice. Here is a ripe research opportunity for someone with more time and energy than me. I am not looking for another research project, so feel free to let your doctoral students know about this one. I did, however, come up with a solution to my challenge of integrating what I learned at conference into my professional life as a social work educator – I should blog about every conference. Not only will I able to reflect on my conference experiences through the process of writing, blogging also lets me share my thoughts with others adding value (hopefully) for those who couldn’t attend the conference or maybe are interested in a social worker’s perspective on a conference.
So how do I go about blogging about a conference? For a few years now, I have been posting information about my own conference presentations. My structure for these post is to take my original conference session proposal, add copies of the slides or handouts, and include some information about the conference and my co-presenters, and viola, a quick and easy blog post. Here is my most recent conference blog post from the third annual Social Work Distance Education Conference in April 2018. While this is a great way to re-use that conference proposal, these blog posts are not reflective of my own learning nor do they offer professional insight about a conference as a whole. To help me write about academic conferences I went back to the internet and I found this blog post, 12 ways to write a conference blog post by Alison Bolen. She her suggestions for blogging about conferences range from a simple summary of one’s impressions from the conference to sharing a to-do list of actions and ideas that you plan to pursue following the conference. Another of Bolen’s ideas is to discuss one’s personal lessons learned, which resonated with me as the IPEC Conference was all about new ideas for me. So without further ado, here are the three most valuable things I learned about Interprofessional Education (IPE) at #IPECSpring2018:
1. Interprofessional Education is ideal for Social Work Education. If you have been doing IPE as a social work educator, then you already know this. I believed this going into #IPECSpring2018, but it really hit home for me as I saw and talked with several leaders of social work education at the conference. These individuals were not on the sidelines of the conference, but front and center at the podium. Darla Spence Coffey, President and CEO of the Council of Social Work Education, was the first keynote speaker of the conference; Jo Ann Regan, Vice President of Education for CSWE, was on the planning committee for the conference, and Marsha Johnson, and the Chief Learning Officer for the Camden Coalition and clinical social worker, led the first presentation. Further, CSWE is an organizational member of IPEC, and the 2015 EPAS with the nine social work competencies support IPE. Beyond these clear supports, as a profession, social work is about building and supporting relationships in professional and ethical ways, with clients and colleagues. Take a quick look at the IPEC’s 2016 Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice, and it will be easy to see where and how social work needs to be at the interprofessional table.
2. Interprofessional Education works with all clients systems, even communities & organizations. IPE has a tradition of focusing on patient care encounters (individuals and families) through standardized patient simulations, patient-level case studies, and mock team meetings to discuss client discharge planning. Social work clearly needs to be part of these learning activities, but what about macro-level or population-based practice settings? What about working with public health students to map sidewalk accessibility in neighborhoods or engaging with a team of computer science and public administration students to develop cost-effective and practical data management systems for local non-profit agencies? In fact, one of my long-standing educational projects at my institution has been the interprofessional poverty simulations, where students from major and professional programs all over campus come together to learn about the affects of poverty on individuals and communities.
3. Resources, resources, resources. There are so many educator resources for IPE, especially free and open access resources. There is no need to re-invent the wheel with IPE there are numerous videos, training modules, and case studies that can be easily adapted to the social work classroom. Here are some of the resources that I learned about:
– IPEC: This national organizations publishes the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice that can be implemented across all professions, which are a must read for anyone wanting to familiarize themselves with IPE. Additionally, they have other reports and comprehensive list of other IPE-based educational centers around the US.
– MedEdPortal’s IPE Collection: MedEd is an open-access and peer-reviewed source for educational materials in the health care professions. The IPE Collection focuses on educational scholarship for interprofessional collaboration, which makes it a great resource for educational activities and publication opportunities.
– National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education: The Center has a large collection of digital and free educational resources for IPE, including case studies, webinars, and journal articles. You can also submit your own resources here, and attend their annual conference.
So this blog post leaves me with two questions for you: 1) What more would you like to know about interprofessional education for social work? and 2) What are you looking for in a summary of a conference you weren’t able to attend? I would love to hear your thoughts and idea. Please leave a comment.
How to Cite:
Hitchcock, L. (2018, May 16). Three things I learned at #IPECSpring2018 [Blog Post]. Retrieved from: https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2018/05/16/three-things-i-learned-at-ipecspring18/
