Abstract
Rudyard Kipling said, "All nice people, like Us, are We; And everyone else is They". In the process of developing strong professional identities, graduates may develop insular perspectives that fit poorly with contemporary health services, thinking of the self as primary. Yet collaboration, with consumers and other professionals is a practice imperative within mental health multi-disciplinary teams [MDTs] (Donnison et al 2009). MDTs were established primarily because other ways of working were unsatisfactory in terms of holistic care, did not promote clients' integration into society, and were less likely to promote use of evidence-based practice (McEvoy & Richards, 2007). Multidisciplinary or interprofessional learning, where professions learn with, from and about each other to improve collaboration and quality of service (Canadian Collaborative Mental Health Initiative, 2006) is still rare within universities (Smith & Pilling, 2007). Consequently, students are unaware of other professional roles, lack confidence for collaborating, and disciplines fail to develop or share each other's innovations (McAllister et al in press). Ultimately, this situation fails community expectations for health reform. Our objective was to provide a learning experience in collaboration, using an ALTC developed media-package and extending it to include emerging mental health paradigms. Thirty-one students and 7 trained educators participated in a 2-day workshop exploring professional roles, a complex client experience, and service utilisation within an MDT. It included a 'full mission' simulation. This comment from student evaluation data is illustrative of the workshop impact. "This was the best workshop I have been to - ever". Student changes in attitude and readiness for interprofessional learning, mental health clinical confidence and educators' experiences will be reported. The audience will have opportunity to consider the benefits of inter-professional learning, and contribute to ways it may be scaled up so that students in other contexts can be inspired to learn with, from and about each other.