Have you ever used Wikipedia to learn more about a person, a place, an idea or an event? Wikipedia is the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet, with more than 15 million articles having been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world.

Recognizing the value of this type of community-driven database, the CIHC is launching a similar initiative, solely dedicated to Interprofessional Education (IPE) and Collaborative Practice (CP). The goals are simple:

* provide a forum where any individual or project interested in IPE and CP can create, edit, add to or verify information about themselves or their work
* provide an easily searchable database of IPE and CP people, projects, supporters and research, that anyone can search and reference.

To view the current content in the wiki, visit www.cihc.ca/wiki and either click on one of the Popular Pages in the left hand column or type your search query in the box. You don’t need to join the wiki to take a look around and see what’s there.

To edit existing or add new content, please click ‘Join this Wiki’ on the top right-hand corner of the main page. Within a few hours you will receive confirmation that you’ve been approved as an administrator on the site. This will allow you to edit pages as you choose. Click on help for some simple “how to” type instructions, but don’t be afraid to try out the various options for formatting, adding files and hyperlinking. If you run into trouble, drop us an email at communications[at]cihc.ca or simply save the page you’re working on and we’ll come along and clean it up in a day or two.

Together we can build an accessible, searchable, informative database of key information related to IPE and CP, and make it possible for information and projects to be shared across the country and the world.

Give it a try, the potential is limitless!

This is going to be very exciting!

Our next big step in growing the community around ideas for improving #interprofessional #collaborative #healthcare is happening on Sunday July 4th at 8PM ET.

You can participate and/or track the discussion live by following #IPChat.

Here’s a breakdown on format for #IPChat 01:

Details:

When: July 4th, 2010 @ 5 pm PT, 8 PM ET
Where: Twitter! #IPChat

Topic: Building the #Interprofessional #Collaborative #Healthcare Social Media Discussion

#IPChat Questions:

To keep the one-hour chat on topic, We’ll be helping guide conversation by using some of the questions below to drive us to share ideas, examples and resources.

If you want to take a peak at where we may go in the conversation, review the questions below.

1. What kind of communities do you currently work with and what kinds of social media tools do they use?
2. What are some online community organizing best practices that you believe we should adopt?
3. What are opportunities and difficulties with getting different healthcare professionals to participate with social media tools.
4. What are some examples of successful use of social media to build communities – within or outside healthcare?
5. Ideas for better social media outreach within the practice community.
6. What are some good ways to track the success of our #IPChats and other social media endeavors?

Any other suggestions are welcome, too, but remember that this is going to be a regular event – occurring on days ending in the number 4 – so there’s lots of time to include ideas in upcoming chats if we don’t get to them this time around.

Please contact me directly with any questions: sean [at] ciha [dot] ca.

A 101-type feature on Joining Twitter, what the # is a hashtag and How to Join a Tweetchat is coming ASAP.

The CIHC Social Media Strategy is taking another step forward toward engaging the practice community through the magic of twitter!

In a series of open, organized and regular meetings called #IPChat, CIHC and our friends and partners in the practice community will gather on twitter on Sunday July 4th at 8PM ET to discuss healthcare topics of interest to the participants.

These meetings – also called tweet ups – will happen every ten days or on a day ending in 4 (ie 4th, 14th, 24th). The tweets from each meeting will be archived and posted on the CIHC blog for everyone to read and comment on.

We are hoping that our friends already on twitter will take the time to participate in this project and help to showcase how amazing these social media tools are for communication, thought leadership and community building.

We’re hoping that by taking the opportunity to lead by example others in the practice community who have not yet begun to use social media will begin to see real value in these tools and take it upon themselves to sign up and begin to participate.

Here’s some of the ideas that we would like cover in the first week:

Opportunities and difficulties with getting different healthcare professionals to participate with social media tools.

Whatever else the participants in #IPChat want to discuss!

We will be posting some walk-through demonstrations for how to participate for anyone that’s new to twitter or to tweet-ups in general in the next day or so.

Looking forward to taking our social media conversation to the next level and we hope that you will participate.

The Sydney Interprofessional Declaration

We the participants of the All Together Better Health 5 International Conference believe that a common global understanding of Interprofessional Collaborative Practice and Care, brought about through interprofessional education and learning, is of fundamental importance to health care providers and users for the provision of high quality health care and better health outcomes.

The Sydney Interprofessional Declaration is premised on The World Health Organization’s definition of Health, that health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

It underpins the call for action from the WHO Framework for Action on Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice.

Through the following articles the Sydney Interprofessional Declaration will advance and strengthen the cause of Interprofessional Collaborative Practice across the globe. It was approved by and is issued on behalf of delegates present at the final plenary session of the All Together Better Health 5 Conference held in Sydney, Australia, 6th-9th April 2010.

Article 1

All users of health and human services shall be entitled to fully integrated, interprofessional collaborative health and human services.

Article 2

All health and human services work to create and strengthen a culture that promotes the delivery of contextual opportunities for interprofessional learning and collaborative team training. Interprofessional education and training for collaborative practice should be a core element of continuing professional development.

Article 3

Health worker education and training prior to practice shall contain significant core elements/learning domains of interprofessional education. These core elements/learning domains shall contain practical experiences, for example simulation. These core elements/learning domains for interprofessional education will be formally assessed.

Article 4

Between ATBH5 and ATBH6 the global interprofessional community will undertake to develop a globally agreed upon set of definitions and descriptions that capture interprofessional education, learning, practice and care.

Article 5

The global interprofessional community will work with the World Health Organization to implement the Framework for Action on Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice.

Awards of Merit for Excellence in Interprofessional Education
Awards of Merit are available annually:
o Excellence in Interprofessional Education Teaching
o Outstanding Leadership in Advancing Interprofessional Education
o Outstanding Team Role Modeling Interprofessional Care

• Closing date for nominations is April 15th, 2010 at noon. No late submissions will be considered.
• As part of your nomination package, please specify in which of the three categories the nominee should be considered.
• Individuals/teams who have been previously nominated and have not won an award remain eligible to apply.

Read the rest of this entry »

We are thrilled to announce that the first version of CIHC’s National Competency Framework is now online and being disseminated across Canada. We know this is a document that many have been eagerly awaiting, and we hope you find it helpful and useful to your work.

In keeping with tradition, we welcome comments, suggestions, corrections or recommendations for this document, and we will consider all comments with care. Feel free to leave feedback as a comment to this blog post!

There are two documents, a ‘Quick Reference Guide’ (which is also contained within the larger document, or can be extracted for those who want to quickly scan an overview of the competencies), and the longer, complete Competency Framework.

Quick Reference Guide, CIHC National Competency Framework

CIHC National Competency Framework

Sign up now for EHPIC Interprofessional Education Faculty Development 2010!

Looks like it’ll be great!

CIHC Encourages Everyone to Participate in This Online Discussion

Everyone is welcome to join the discussion but you have to register to participate.

Registration is free and easy – just go here -> www.hpgn.org

Here’s a breakdown of the details…

The World Health Organization (WHO) and partners invite you to join the Health Professionals Global Network (HPGN)

Virtual Global Discussion Forum on Interprofessional Collaboration in Education and Practice

Dates of the virtual global discussion forum: 1 – 12 February 2010

Read the rest of this entry »

Hello,

Many thanks to all who participated in the recent teleconferences.   Your thoughts and feedback were invaluable and we look forward to moving ahead.

As part of Mainstream, we’re hoping to expand our reach to include members of the practice community who haven’t previously been engaged in CIHC.

One of the areas we’re looking at closely is the use of social media, both to introduce CIHC to a new audience, and to open up new avenues of discussion.   Before we move ahead on these social media platforms however, we would like to gather a bit of information on how each of you interact with tools such as Facebook, Twitter or Blogs.

Below you will find a link to a quick survey that will help us better understand how we can use these new technologies to build our network and connect with members of the practice community.

Your results are confidential and will be used for our learning purposes only.  Thanks in advance for taking the survey. Please do not hesitate to be in touch should you have any questions.

Survey:

You can take the survey by clicking this link right here -> Take The CIHC Social Media Survey.

Best Regards,

Ellen, Val and Andrea.

Here it is, the newly dedicated CIHC blog!  Feel the excitement.

It’s got a stylish new home and look and we’re very excited to take this major step toward building and connecting the CHIC community.

I suppose that this is as good a place as any for me to introduce myself.

My name is Sean Cranbury and I’ll be your host, guide – concierge, if you will – as we explore new ways of connecting, growing, sharing and collaborating.  I have a lot of experience working with these social media tools as well as a history of work in publishing, marketing and community events organizing.

The CIHC blog will be a place where all of us can come to see and share new information and ideas.

I will be doing an on-going series of interviews with CIHC members to hear their stories and ideas and to hopefully create new, exciting conversations.

It’s All About Collaboration:

Please feel free to share your ideas with us.  You can leave comments on any of the posts on this blog, join our Facebook Fan Page, follow us on Twitter or send me an email directly at sean[at]cihc[dot]ca.

Your ideas for improving and growing our community are warmly received.

I hope that over time you will see this place become a fertile platform for sharing promising practices, ideas and stories.  Please feel free to contribute where you can.

Thanks,

Sean