At the start of IPL week I found myself in a bit of a tight situation, which made me effectively miss an important aspect

of collaborative learning and team working. After having experienced this unfortunate event, it made me realise the importance of communication between a multi-disciplinary team (MDT). I contacted my cohorts as soon as possible, and they responded very quickly and immediately found a solution to catch me up which was very satisfying. As Ovretveit, (1993) once defined the MDT as a group of practitioners with a wide variety of professional training who regularly meet to provide a service to clients. Therefore to provide the best care for our patients I have learnt that effective communication between a MDT is essential, as we all vary in terms of our professional qualities and distributing our practice together will provide the best outcome to all treatments. As well as knowing little about everyones profession prior to IPL week, I established my main challenge was to try to define my profession to all my peers. It was an obstacle as we only just started to become aware of key concepts. Occupational therapy (OT) is so hard to define to other professionals because it is a diverse profession, and has undergone many changes since its beginnings, and people usually mistake occupation in OT as a job. As well as defining it to my peers in my own words, I also researched more deeply into my profession and produced a power point for all of them. As a result I was praised for the time I took to explain my profession, and the nurses in my group were particularly interested in what I did and thrived to know more. I now feel more confident to define my profession without hesitation, and feel this will bring about positive social change in our field if we continually define ourselves. During week B of IPL I felt I gained a greater insight into all the professions and I had understood this when we were evaluating as a group at the end. Similarly evaluation is the third stage of the Gibbs (1988) model of reflection and gives an account of the importance of MDT. There are many positive aspects of MDT as they work well together as a team with the same goal in mind. We all recognized when working on our activity that referrals down to all members of the MDT is essential, if we want our clients lifestyle and health to benefit them for the long-term, and this is supported by (Onyett 2003) who believes the MDT can have a large impact on the clients life and can change their long-term way of living. I believe an MDT approach can get professionals interacting together cohesively by bringing information together, to obtain an in-depth account of the possible problems of each individual patient. In doing this they have all achieved client centeredness and are able to make sure that a suitable range of treatment is given.

CL COVER WORKSHEET OF REFERENCES

Ovretveit, J. (1993) Co-ordinating Community Care: multidisciplinary teams and care management. Buckingham. Open University Press. AOTA INC: occupational therapy: its definitions and functions. AJOT 26(4):204-205, 1972. Onyett, S. (2003) Team working in Mental Health. Bristol: Palgrave Macmillan. Gibbs 1988, Learning by doing. A guide to teaching and learning methods, oxford polytechnic, Oxford