Interprofessional Mentoring Guide - Alberta Health Services

9 Discussing collaborative practice at the site
Staff discussions about collaborative practice at the site are important for students. These
discussions will expose students to ideas about how care is currently being delivered and the
reasons for having certain processes in place. This raises questions about what works well, where
the gaps are and how collaborative practice could be improved.
Supervisor/interprofessional mentor role: support students to attend these meetings. If students
cannot attend these, share these discussions with your students in the debriefing sessions.
V
Supervising
Student role: ask your supervisors and mentors how collaboration around specific activities is
carried out at the settings using the interprofessional competencies as guidelines. Research some of
the practices in the literature on interprofessionality.
Competencies highlighted: interprofessional communication, role clarification, team functioning
Last but not least, there are different ways that teams connect socially. For example, they may have
common lunches, share morning coffee breaks, or gather in certain areas in the cafeteria. If there
are any social occasions for your team, try to involve the students. It will help them to increase their
own comfort level by seeing how experienced clinicians interact in informal settings.