Philippa Sully Senior Lecturer

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Philippa Sully Senior Lecturer
P.A.Sully_at_city.ac.uk Scott
Reeves Associate Professor
University of Toronto
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Interprofessional education for practitioners
working with survivors of violence exploring
early and longer-term impacts on professional
practice.
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Introduction

• The aim of this paper is to provide an
• insight into the impact of an inter-
• professional masters programme for
• practitioners working with survivors of
• intentional and unintentional violence.

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Introduction

• MSc in Interprofessional Practice pathway Society
  Violence and Practice developed by an
  interprofessional team
• Reflected both professional education needs as
  well as the needs of users and carers/assistants
• Based on an outline curriculum suggested by Dr LA
  Hoff of University of Massachusetts and
  colleagues in Lisbon and Toronto.

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Dynamic Partnerships

• Developed because
• Different perspectives on nature of violence its
  containment and prevention
• Programme development away from procedures
  towards processes of effective interprofessional
  practice

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Society, Violence and Practice

• AIM
• To develop further practice, research,
  prevention, education and consultancy in the
  fields of intentional and unintentional violence.

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Society, Violence and Practice

• Founded on the principle
• that all learning and reflection is related to
• practice and its evidence base, and facilitators
• address group process and content accordingly
• (Sully 2002).

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Dealing with Violence

• Violence violates boundaries.
• This can be can be mirrored in reflective
  practice and how it is manifest in group
  processes.
• Sensitive facilitation is crucial.

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Dealing with Violence

• Impact is
• Personal
• Social
• Economic
• Cultural
• Environmental

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Dealing with Violence

• Effective interprofessional and interagency
  collaboration to promote effective care for
  survivors of violence is crucial
• (e.g. Clarke 2001, Shepherd Sivarajasingam
  2000).
• Central position within current United Kingdom
  legislation and policy (e.g. DOH 2000, Laming
  2003).

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Dealing with Violence

• Psychological safety is an essential feature of
  working with survivors of violence.
• Parallel strategies between classroom and
  practice.
• Partnership and flexible working mirror sound
  interprofessional practice with survivors.

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Dealing with Violence

• The maintenance of safe psychological space is
  essential when examining violence and its
  processes.
• The principle of safety in practice promotes safe
  psychological space for constructive conflict and
  challenge, enabling difficult issues and emotions
  to be addressed. (Bowlby 1988).

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Content delivery is innovative

• Enquiry-based learning
• Interprofessional panel discussions
• Reflective practice with 2 facilitators
• Assessments focussed on practice development

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Theoretical approach

• Based on psychodynamic and systems theories of
  groups, teams and organizational processes
• (e.g. Obholzer and Roberts 1994, Bion 1961).
• Safe psychological space core conditions of an
  effective helping relationship
• Sound facilitative practice (e.g. Hawkins and
  Shohet 2000)

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Research Study

• Carried out over two years with later follow-up
  telephone interviews
• Provided detailed feedback on participants
  perceptions of the course and its impact on their
  practice

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Findings

• Early effects of interprofessional learning
• Enhanced confidence and knowledge
• about interprofessional and interagency work
  thus increasing confidence in practice.

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Findings

• Early effects (continued)
• Improving stereotypes and relationships
• resulting in changing largely negative
  perceptions of colleagues in different
  professions or agencies thus enhancing working
  relationships

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Findings

• Changing practice
• there were opportunities to apply learning from
  the course to develop/change practice between
  study days

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Findings

• Longer term impacts
• Identified through follow-up interviews
• Sustained Change
• Initial positive impacts were sustained

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Findings

• Longer term (continued)
• Recognised expertise
• within their area of practice in some
• cases leading to promotion

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Findings

• Longer term (continued)
• The bigger picture
• Began closing the gap between practice and
  policy-making

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Conclusions

• Learning needs to be focussed on
• the experience of working together - carefully
  facilitated and related to practice
• the realities of practice

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Conclusions

• Students benefitted from
• Supervised reflective practice sessions
• Experiential interprofessional learning
• Establishing and maintaining networks

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Theory in Practice

• The premise that
• it is crucial for students to have a safe,
  practice
• focussed environment in which to explore
  together
• their interprofessional work with violence
  and its
• consequences
• was confirmed by this study.

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Philippa Sully Senior Lecturer
P.A.Sully_at_city.ac.uk Scott
Reeves Associate Professor
University of Toronto