Qatar- IPE holds 4th forum for healthcare students

The Interprofessional Education Student Association (IPE), a group of healthcare students from different universities, organized one of its most successful events of the year, with around 150 attendees, entitled ‘The Fourth Annual IPE Forum for Healthcare Students'.

The event included faculty, students and clinicians from various healthcare disciplines in different universities across Qatar including Qatar University's (QU) College of Pharmacy (CPH), College of Health Sciences (CHS) and College of Medicine (CMED) alongside peers from University of Calgary in Qatar (UCQ), College of the North Atlantic - Qatar (CNA-Q) and Weill Cornell Medicine - Qatar (WCM-Q).

Vice President for Medical and Health Sciences and Dean of the CMED, Dr. Egon Toft welcomed guests followed by CPH Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at CPH and QU Health Chair of the Interprofessional Education Committee Dr. Alla El-Awaisi and President of the IPE Student Association and CPH MSc student Ms. Sawsan AlMukdad.

The students engaged in various activities and competitions aimed at enhancing knowledge, collaboration and interprofessional communication. The program included five oral presentations and 46 poster presentations where students shared their research projects, IPE experience and advocated for their respective healthcare professions.

The oral and poster presentations were judged by an interprofessional team representing the four healthcare institutions.

During the forum and for the first time in Qatar and the Middle East, the internationally recognized healthcare challenge was introduced.

The challenge gave the students the opportunity to collaboratively work together outside their academic schedules. It required healthcare students from four institutions to work together over two weeks to determine the best care plan for the patient.

Five teams competed against each other and presented their proposed patient-centered care plans for a complex patient, which they worked on for around two weeks. The teams were judged based on their ability to satisfy the IPE competencies including collaboration, interprofessional communication, patient-centeredness, team functioning and role clarification.

Finally, the event also featured the distribution of awards for the winners in the best poster, oral presentation competitions as well as the winning team in the healthcare challenge.

The healthcare challenge winners were for the team ‘Holistiholics.' The team included: Amani Adel, College of North Atlantic in Qatar; Asma Ouagueni, Nutrition, College of Health Sciences, Qatar University; Ayman Ibrahim, College of Medicine, Qatar University; Daniah Moreno, University of Calgary in Qatar; Hasna Hassan, Biomedical, College of Health Sciences, Qatar University; Raneem Abunahia, College of Pharmacy, Qatar University and Naseeba Thasneem College of North Atlantic in Qatar.

The winners of the best oral presentation awards included Umaira Behzad from University of calgary as a first-place winner for a presentation entitled ‘Modern Day Nursing'. The second-place winner was for a presentation entitled ‘A Different Flavor of IPE' presented by Zeinab Abedini and Shimaa Aboelbaha from the College of Pharmacy at Qatar University. College of North Atlantic students' Aisha Sultan, Fathima Veluthavalappil, Maria Zulfiqar, Naseeba Thasneem, Ruqqaiya Irshad, Sarah Syed, and Tania Abab achieved the third place for their presentation under the title ‘Respiratory Therapy: Breathe easy.'

QU VP for Medical Education and CMED Dean Dr. Egon Toft said of the forum, 'QU Health is proud to be a part of the Interprofessional Education Sessions, which helps prepare students to face the challenges they have yet to encounter.

The Interprofessional Education system was founded to develop and facilitate interactions between health care students from different institutions, and world-leading training synergies across health care majors, equipping learners with team-based collaborative skills and emphasising interactive learning.

MENAFN0602201900630000ID1098078707