Samuel Rasmussen is a Pharmacy Student and an Interprofessional Education (IPE) Scholar.
What do you enjoy most about interprofessional activities?
It's the people that draw me to participate in interprofessional activities when I'm able (and always with excitement!). There's something about learning and working alongside those outside of my own professional scope that makes the activities all the more impactful. Having the opportunity to learn from others can be like a breath of fresh air because there are unique nuances informing their perspectives which often don't influence mine. It's these valuable interactions that I always enjoy.
How do interprofessional activities enhance your learning and/or training?
The thing that interprofessional activities do for me is upend how I think about what it is I've learned or been trained to do. We're all working towards similar goals when it comes to providing care, but it can be all too easy to gloss over the uniqueness inherent in each of our roles. We each have our own responsibilities, but these all intersect during our day-to-day practices. When I'm afforded the opportunity to take part in an interprofessional activity, what I'm really being offered is the opportunity to take a step back and truly appreciate what each member of a care team brings to the table. I learned what pharmacy can do through my program, but these activities helped me appreciate what pharmacy can do for the other professions (like nursing and medicine) as well as what these professions can do for pharmacy.
How do you envision incorporating what you learn through interprofessional activities into your future career?
More than anything, I envision incorporating the value of acknowledging and respecting one another's expertise into my professional role. It's a vague response, I know. But I find great power in the idea of willingly collaborating with someone of a different profession specifically for what it is they know or can do that I don't or can't. I find interprofessional activities to be integrative because I can integrate what I learn from others with what I'm already familiar with. In this same way, it only makes sense to integrate into my professional know-how the know-how unique to different professions. I don't know what this will look like, but I know the best teams are interprofessional at heart.