Creating connected care teams

The program brought together 100 interns, 89 nurses, eight pharmacy graduates, eight medical imaging interns, and nine allied health graduates at a combined orientation program across a number of Western Health sites, including the new Footscray Hospital. 

Director Education and Learning Robyn Peel said the joint orientation program set the foundation for working together in multidisciplinary teams at Western Health.  

‘As an undergraduate you get trained in your streams, very much siloed into your profession. Nurses trained with nurses, doctors with doctors,’ Robyn said.  

‘But the minute you walk through the front doors of a hospital to work, it’s a multidisciplinary team with all these different health professionals working together. We want our graduates to get to know and be familiar with people from other professions that they’ll be working in that area with right from the start.  

'We know that if you increase communication between the professions, and the research tells us, this will improve patient care,' she said. 

The interprofessional orientation is the beginning of year of sharing education and training, with joint grand rounds and study days planned throughout the year.  

Since the first interprofessional orientation last year, the feedback has been great, Robyn said.  

‘Something we were able to improve on this year was providing more time together, feedback last year was they wanted more opportunities to be together.’  

Education teams across disciplines have worked on this orientation for months to deliver a great experience for the new graduates. 

‘Going into their new careers, what they’re feeling is common across all professions. They’re meeting people from all different walks of life, but they’re all starting something new. They’re all nervous, but they’re feeling it together. This is the first step the camaraderie we see at Western Health,’ Robyn said.