1. www.easternhealth.org.au Integrated Education – Improving the Team Whitfield A, Little A, Iro R, Gangopadhyay H, Charlesworth C. Eastern Health Intensive Care Services, Melbourne, Victoria Background Many intensive care units (ICUs) develop orientation courses to introduce new and inexperienced staff into the clinical area. These programmes are commonly run separately by each of the professions, in particular, medical, nursing and physiotherapy. Given the limited educational resources available, this silo-based approach can be wasteful. It may also reinforce a limited understanding of professional roles that may lead to poor communication and hamper effective patient care. Inter-professional learning (IPL) and simulated learning environments (SLE) enable explicit team training which may improve teamwork, communication and leadership skills. Method We introduced a two day ICU orientation course run by senior medical staff for junior medical staff in our health service in 2011. Subsequent collaboration with clinical nurse educators, together with an organisation-wide focus on the management of deteriorating patients, resulted in progressive evolution of the course. It is now an inter- professional course, attended by clinical staff from nursing, medical and allied health backgrounds The content of the course has also broadened from the care of patients within ICU to the care critically ill or deteriorating patients, regardless of location. Results Results are provided for the February 2013 course. Approximately* 25 participants attended each day of the course. Attendees included junior doctors from the Emergency Department, ICU, general medical and surgical areas, ranging from intern to registrar, nursing staff from ICU and the emergency department, medical students, physiotherapists and a dietitian. Facilitators of the course included intensivists, anaesthetists, clinical nurse educators and allied health professionals. * Only an approximate total can be provided due to varying numbers attending different sessions. Conclusions The course was well received by participants and we were able to achieve both multi- disciplinary and inter- professional attendance. This provided an opportunity for explicit team training with the potential for greater understanding of professional roles. Demonstrating whether this translates into improved patient care requires further study. Contact: ann.whitfield@easternhealth.org.au Acknowledgments : Jenny Ng, Administrative Assistant Sample Course Programme Course Evaluation Sample Comments Positive Really enjoyed the interactive presentation. Very helpful and pitched at the right level. Easy to understand. Great practical. Great diagram on whiteboard, really helped understanding. Good explanation of basics. Negative More scenarios would be better, I realise time is the issue. Venue next door - loud +++ Needs more time dedicated to this! Topics addressed within the course include basic and advanced life support; identification, assessment and management of deteriorating patients; and crisis resource management. Teaching methods include didactic lectures, interactive skill-based learning and immersive simulation scenarios. Presenters of the didactic sessions were requested to use interactive styles to promote audience participation and engagement. Attendance at the course was opened to all staff. Junior doctors with a forthcoming ICU rotation were rostered to attend where possible. Other junior doctors were welcome, as were nurses from any of the critical care areas. Allied health professionals associated with the critical care areas were also invited. Attendance by as wide a group as possible was encouraged through a “drop-in” approach with staff able to attend for both days, one day, half days or individual sessions. Catering was provided. No evaluation of the initial courses (apart from informal feedback from attendees) was performed. For the two courses held in 2013, attendance records were kept and evaluation forms handed out for completion by participants. This form requested evaluation of presenter, content, time- frame and venue for every session using a 5 point Likert scale with space for free text comments. Only 5 negative ratings (poor) were received: these all related to timeframe with the associated comments indicating that the respondent would have liked more time for the topic. This was also the source of most of the “acceptable” ratings. Comments were also overwhelmingly positive. The infrequent negative comments referred to too short a timeframe or noise from an adjacent lecture room. Thirty-two evaluation forms were returned (response rate 64%). Of these, 18 provided an evaluation for every item requested. Ninety-eight percent of all responses were positive (rated good, very good or excellent on the Likert scale). This project was possible due to funding made available by Health Workforce Australia.