Our guest blogger is Jill Thistlethwaite, MBBS, MMEd, PhD, FRCGP, FRACGP, a Fulbright scholar, health professions education consultant and family medicine physician from Australia (but originally from the UK). She recently spent four months at the National Center exploring evaluation and research methods for IPECP and currently serves as a community moderator.

I’m currently enjoying the height of summer in Sydney and it is glorious beach weather. It’s hard to believe that just a few weeks ago I was shivering in the snow and freezing temperatures of Minnesota.  The end of an old year is a time for reflection, and I have been thinking about my time at the National Center and how it will affect my work in the New Year.

I couldn’t have been made more welcome at a time of transition for the staff, who are now two years into the center’s work.  During my four months, there was a lot of discussion about evaluation and evidence, how to measure change and, in particular, how to measure the impact of IPE against the Triple Aim. 

Even though I am now far away, and in another hemisphere, I continue to be involved with the National Center as a community moderator – so I will popping up on the website to comment on papers, generate discussion and foster the interprofessional community of practice.

Here in Australia I am busy writing.  With my two co-editors (Dawn Forman, United Kingdom, and Marion Jones, New Zealand), we are choosing the cover design for the second volume of our series on leadership for IPE and collaborative practice, and we are planning the third volume.  Barbara Brandt has agreed to write a chapter for volume three, which will focus specifically on research and evaluation.  I will be editing chapters from the U.S. as well as Pakistan and South Africa. 

I am really missing the collaborative environment in Minneapolis – so good to be surrounded by people with a commitment to interprofessional working.  In my last week I presented a workshop on assessment and distributed the next version of the assessment tool we have been working on in Australia. 

There are, in fact, two versions of the Individual Teamwork Observation and Feedback Tool (iTOFT) – one for junior students and one for more senior students and junior health professionals.  The tool will be available soon with a resource pack for faculty, observers and students, which includes a section on recent innovations in feedback written by Professor David Boud, an expert in this area.

In reflection, my happy memories of Minnesota include: 

• Watching a college football game (the Golden Gophers) on a cold day. Over three hours of spectating  there was one hour of football played
• A traditional Thanksgiving dinner in Rochester at the home of professor Fred Hafferty of the Mayo Clinic and his family
• Bob Dylan playing in his home state 
• Work wise I was very impressed with the student-led interprofessional clinic, which offers health care to uninsured people – a growing number of such clinics in the U.S.  I visited the clinic with Dr. Brian Sick, who has written about its development in the Journal of Interprofessional Care.  In Australia we are fortunate that insurance is not a problem and student clinics are usually part of curricula activities.

So my aspirations for 2015 include lobbying for a National Center-type institution for Australia.  We are developing work plans for this as I write, but funding may be a problem – such a frequent barrier to enhancing work in this area. 

I will keep you posted.