INMED2017 Annual Scientific Meeting
The Royal College of Surgeons
27th February – 1st March 2017
The 10th INMED Annual Scientific Meeting was held at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in Dublin. The conference theme was “Collective competence for healthcare practitioners: preparing for real-world practice“. The conference was INMED’s first truly interprofessional ASM. The organising team of 11 people led by Dr Eva Doherty of the RCSI represented a broad range of health professions and all of the keynote speakers were selected from disciplines other than medicine.
The conference was the largest yet, welcoming over 200 delegates over two and half days. The first day of the conference is always the pre conference day. On this occasion there were three pre conference workshops encompassing a simulation roadshow, a workshop for early career clinical educators and workshop that examined the use of social media to enhance health professions education.
The first conference day began with two presentations that looked at teamwork from two quite different perspectives. Lorelei Lingard from the University of Western Ontario, Canada has done extensive work over many years on teams and teamwork in clinical settings. She spoke about how health professionals are trained for individual competence yet, teamwork and successful teams often require interpersonal and situational attributes that represent collective rather than individual competence. She argued that we should consider appearing graduates and trainees for collective as well as individual competence. The second keynote was given by Professor Rhona Flin, emeritus professor of organisational psychology, University of Aberdeen. Rhona looked at individual contributions to teams and teamwork based on her vast experience of studying teams and events in the aviation and the oil industry.
We had a record number of electronic poster and oral presentations (listed in the INMED2017 Book of Abstracts). This year, we created a special strand for communication skills research and development in collaboration with the Irish branch of the European Association for the study of communication skills in health care, itEACH. Many of the oral presentation slides and electronic posters are now available on this website.
Best ePoster Presentation
Safer Patient Mealtimes: An interdisciplinary Educational Initiative for HSCP students in a neurorehabilitation setting.
Fiona Haughey, National Rehabilitation Hospital
Best itEACH Presentation
Communication skills training for health care professionals in palliative and end-of-life care: What works and where to from here?
Kathleen McLoughlin, University College Cork
Best Student Presentation
The prescription journey: a qualitative exploration of an interprofessional simulated learning activity
Caoimhe Cooke, QUB Belfast
Best Oral Presentation
Using a Flipped Classroom to Improve Ophthalmology Practical Skills in Medical Students
Rob McGrath, Cork University Hospital
We persisted with a networking innovation from INMED 2016, entitled Talking Tables. The idea is that the lunch area is a buffet with tables designated by theme to various dilemmas and issues in health professions education. Delegates choose to sit at a table that is pertinent that an area of interest and the conversation is driven by some prompt questions on the table. It provides an excellent opportunity for people with shared interest to meet each other as well as having prompts for getting conversation going. We would like to thank Michael Williams of Queens University Belfast for overseeing this excellent innovation.
We again offered an excellent student led session in which there were eight student presentations on thought-provoking and stimulative topics. The session was so good that it was extended thus delaying our AGM! Later, at dinner in Fallon & Byrne’s a great time was had by all.
Day three of INMED 2017 comprised a one-hour plenary session in which three health professionals spoke about their lengthy and at times difficult engagement with the health service. The purpose of the session was to allow them to engage with curriculum developers so that future graduates will be better prepared to meet the needs of patients. We also offered a qualitative research analysis masterclass led by Professor Lingard. this overlapped with eight shorter rapid infusion workshops on a variety of themes. We close the conference with an excellent keynote presentation on competency-based education by Professor Ian Bates, Professor of pharmacy, University College London.
Following on the successful use of the conference cartoonist last year, this year INMED commissioned a videography of the conference which provides a great montage and memory to the event and which is now available on our website.
INMED would like to sincerely thank Eva Doherty and the organising committee at RCSI (Dr Martina Crehan, Ms Fiona Daly, Ms Leonie Heskin, Dr Jane Holland, Dr Daniel Kane, Prof James Murray, Dr Tom O’Connor, Dr Angela O’Dea, Dr Gozie Offiah, Ms Dara O’Keeffe, Dr Cristín Ryan, Dr Judith Strawbridge).
Please see the INMED2017 Book of Abstracts here.