Collaborative Working Reflection

A large body of experience and research provides clear evidence about many of the key determinants of successful partnerships. The focus is to achieve better outcomes through improved service delivery. Partnership working has come a long way in recent years. There is now a consensus that effective partnership working is essential in order to design, develop and deliver personal services for those requiring support and assistance to optimise their independence and happiness. The most important features of an effective partnership are engaging the right people and ensuring they function as a genuine team.

As you will note from my CV, I hold a First Class BA Honours Degree in Childhood and Family Studies and Education Studies. Whilst the majority of the modules I studied were based around developing my knowledge of working with children and families, some modules were focused on my professional and ethical practice.

In order to collaborate successfully with the other members of the team, they have to ‘work together’. Collaboration implies “working together to achieve something that neither agency could achieve alone” (cited by Biggs in Day, 2006, p9). It involves effective communication and contribution to a common goal – and the health and wellbeing of the patient and shared responsibility of the outcome. Each team requires a quality leader, regular meetings attended by all members, joint assessment, regular reviews of patient records which should include ‘shared care plans’; joint decisions following consultation and task delegation to individual team members with the outcome being that “care must be structured, organised and systematically provided to each person in a variety of ways” (Creating an Interprofessional Workforce, 2007, p10).

Health and social care organisations increasingly need to work together in partnership to get better value from the available resources and improve services and outcomes for service users, by improving quality of support for service users. Good relationships between partners, a common vision and understanding of expected achievements and what outcomes need to be delivered are critical to the success of partnerships. This will enable a more responsive service, which is well co-ordinated approach to the service delivery, and better value for money by ensuring reduced duplication of services.

making Practice-Based Learning work Reflection on PRACTICE A resource commissioned by the Making Practice Based Learning Work project, an educational development project funded through FDTL Phase 4 Project Number 174/02 and produced by staff from the University of Ulster. www.practicebasedlearning.org Author Patricia McClure School of Health Sciences, University of Ulster www.practicebasedlearning.org contents Reflection on Practice 02

Collaborative practice (Sadler 2004) is at the forefront of health and social care training. For me, like many nursing students, the first steps in collaborative practice were the IPL (interprofessional learning) modules at university. This has been described as two or more professions being taught together as away of cultivating collaborative practice (Caipe. 2010). These modules consisted of student nurses studying different fields, OT’s, radiographers and midwifes. This was the first opportunity I had to meet other professions, who as in any project are the ones who collaborate not the institutions (UKCR 2007). Since then all the IPL modules I have completed have been with adult nursing

Today’s session was conducted by second year placement social work students and service users. The issue they covered was about the relevance of working in partnership within the social care profession.

The aim of this assignment is to give a reflective account on group presentation and the peer assessment process as well as the development of a personal action plan. It would involve using ‘The What? Model of Structured Reflection’ (Driscoll 2007) to analyse the experience of using a group designed assessment tool to assess my peers and the experience of being peer assessed. Additionally, experience of completing a group presentation would be reflected upon. A personal action plan which identifies areas for personal development and the designed assessment tool is attached as appendix 1 and 2 respectively.

Finally, power sharing is seen as ‘sharing of government responsibility and political co-operation between the two partners’ (Gottlieb et al., 2005, p. 8). Specifically, among health and social care service professionals and providers, power sharing may be the prerequisite factor to develop a collaborative partnership relationship.

Mutual cooperation and equal loads of work among colleagues can help improve partnership working as well.

To analyse the presentation and teamwork I need to be able to understand everyone has different experiences and different ways of working and had their own view on teamwork. My confidence grew as I got to know the team. Giving the presentation has helped me with my confidence, which I will need when I am working in the health care. I have also learned to speak up more and encourage others to take part when they where being quiet and not pulling their weight. It was good to do research using the appropriate methods, looking at journals and professional sites. I managed to hold it together during the presentation in front of everyone. I knew the presentation was not going to go as well has it could due to the lack of practice. The reason I was so nervous was

1- What role did you play in team meetings or discussions (online or face-to-face)? What ideas or. work did you contribute? Consider your verbal (vocal or written tone, etc.) and nonverbal communication (body language, facial expressions, etc).

To further understand Belbin Team Role Theory, I, together with four students formed a team and simulated as being authorized by the Songjiang Government Bureau to investigate into the current situation and the prospect of the higher education industry in Songjiang District. Through unremitting team efforts, we successfully demonstrated our findings and recommended several ideas via a formal presentation. Reviewing the three-months-long process of cooperation, I really found this experience of learning meaningful and fruitful. This reflective essay is a conclusion of my sympathetic introspection of the

“Group work is a form of voluntary association of members benefiting from cooperative learning that enhances the total output of the activity than when done individually”.

Our presentation slides focuses more on pictures, charts and key-points for visual aid. By keeping the slides simple, audiences can focus more on the speaker. The videos uploaded by the Centre for English Language Communication department tell us our weaknesses which we do not realize by ourselves. Reflecting on my first and second presentation through videos and feedbacks from Ms. Christine has helped me