University success at National HealthFusion Team Challenge

Congratulations to our final year Health students who were placed 1st in New South Wales and 3rd overall.  Monash University and Deakin University took 1st and 2nd place in the competition.

The Faculty of Health provided five participants in the 2012 National HealthFusion Team Challenge (HFTC) at the University of Queensland on Friday August 31.  

This is the first year that the University of Newcastle has committed a team to be part of this great challenge to promote interprofessional learning which is a significant pillar of Faculty of Health learning objectives.  We would hope to continue in the future.

Members of the Faculty of Health Team, who are final-year students, were:

• Alexandra Gallagher - Medicine
• Connor Gleadhill - Physiotherapy
• Sarah Marsh - Pharmacy
• Marc Nies – Occupational Therapy
• Leah Philpott – Nutrition & Dietetics

Accompanying the team members were:

• Samantha Ashby, Lecturer in Occupational Therapy, School of Health Sciences
• Ryan Duchatel – Faculty of Health, Project Officer
• Rashi Minocha – Medical student

What is the HealthFusion Team Challenge?

The HFTC is a national extracurricular competition between mixed interprofessional teams of final year health students. The HFTC provides students with an opportunity to demonstrate expertise in teamwork and collaboration as they develop a management plan for a client with complex health needs.

The HFTC was launched as an annual event at the University of Queensland in 2007 drawing on a model successfully pioneered at the University of British Columbia. In 2009 the HFTC Project Team expanded the event to include an annual National event, the Oz HFTC.

The HFTC is Australia’s premier student interprofessional event, attracting some of the nations best and brightest to compete.

How does the HFTC work?

Teams members can be drawn from any discipline provided the total number does not exceed six and can only include one member of a professional discipline (eg. one Pharmacist, one Nurse, one Physiotherapist, etc).

Each team is given access to a challenging case study and asked to prepare a management plan for their patient over the course of the four week preparation period.

On event day, each team presents their management plan in front of a live audience and panel of expert judges. At the completion of all presentations each team is asked to respond to a series of timed extension questions or exercises designed to test their teamwork skills under pressure. During this process they may be questioned by the judging panel about the case or the teamwork processes they used. The team which performs the best over the course of the day is then awarded first place.