PIHC Synergy

PIHC Synergy is a series of events that brings students together to think about key issues. These sessions are included in the timetables of most first-year undergraduate programmes, aiming to drive interprofessional working and learning across the faculty.

PIHC Synergy sessions will bring professionals, academics, and students together to discuss topics such as dementia, oral cancer and sustainability in health and social care. The value of such sessions to students graduating into health or social care professions is clear, but they are just as valuable to those who have no such career plans.

In daily life, patients or service users interact with multiple health and social care professionals. Consequently, interprofessional learning, ‘where professions learn with, from and about each other to improve collaboration and the quality of care’ (CAIPE 2002) has been the subject of much discussion in the healthcare sector for many years. It has become particularly important in the context of an aging population with increasingly complex, co-morbid conditions that cannot be treated by any single profession. The introduction of interprofessional learning into the workplace and the training of new healthcare professionals has been linked to improved clinical decision-making and standards of practice (Darlow et al, 2015). Furthermore, interprofessional learning also has a number of benefits to the employability of graduates as they enter the workforce, both within the healthcare sector and beyond.

Learning to work across professional boundaries will also benefit students who have no plans to work in health or social care. Employers in every sector will value the skills developed through inter-professional learning.

We believe interprofessional education is crucial to those going on to work in health and social care and enriching even for those who aren't. That’s why we aim to become a national leader in this field, and our PIHC Synergy sessions are a unique step toward that goal.