Congratulations to Ms Julienne Jen, recipient of the 2019 HKU’s Outstanding Teaching Award, and 48 colleagues from 5 Faculties, for receiving the 2021 QS Reimagine Education Gold Award (Hybrid Learning) with group project “Breaking disciplinary Silos with Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice (IPECP): An e-Mart approach”.

Recognised as the ‘Oscars’ in Education, the Reimagine Education Awards’ extended panel of over 200 international judges select winners with innovation, scalability, efficacy, and uniqueness as the criteria of achieving outstanding standards. This is the first year the Faculty of Law joined the IPECP and we are proud to be among the 3 winning HKU projects.

The IPECP is a collaborative education programme steered by the Faculty of Medicine in 2016 which aims to get students from different Faculties and Departments to work together in the treatment of a patient.  Together with content experts from other disciplines, the case scenario is designed such that all students from the different disciplines would be able to contribute their expertise learnt from their studies to provide an adequate treatment plan for the patient. As law is relevant to all aspects of daily life, there are many aspects in the case scenario where law students can offer to students from other disciplines.

42 senior law students were recruited on this Pilot Scheme.  All of them participated in 2 briefing sessions before teaming up with students from Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Chinese Medicine, Social Work and Speech and Hearing. With this training in working with students from other disciplines, law students can understand how different disciplines can work together and this should mimic professional practice in real life. The Programme also gave students an opportunity to learn the “language” of other professionals and the lay client; and they can then in turn practise and learn the skills of communicating with people who have not been legally trained.

“Since the participation of the programme was voluntary on the part of the students, I was very happy to see their enthusiasm throughout the activities.  Although I envisaged the law students playing a secondary role in the discussions of a patient’s treatment plan, I understand that in a lot of the groups, it was actually the law student who led most of the discussions and played an active role in leadership and assisting the collaboration of other students.  The teachers in the other faculties have also noticed this and they are grateful for our students’ participation. I believe this new experiential learning opportunity would be truly beneficial to our students. ” said Ms Julienne Jen.

 

Student Sharing

“After the whole programme ended, I understood the relationship between law and medicine better. Legal knowledge may not assist the patient’s rehabilitation process directly, however it is important in safeguarding the patient’s rights during the time when he is in an especially vulnerable position, desperately requiring medical attention. It is also important to health workers for risk management, to prevent potential breach of confidentiality and duty of care at an early stage. If medical professionals are advised on these legal matters, precautions would be taken and tragic events of medical negligence would potentially be reduced. The programme has increased my interest in medico-legal issues, it also changed my original view that law is only distantly related to medicine.”

~Angie Ho (BBA(Law) & LLB3)

 

“The programme offered precious chance for me to interact with students from different faculty. This dynamic composition of the team allows the creation of sophisticated and comprehensive plan. Our medical plan included medical, legal, psychological, social aspects which resembles real life cases that always involve issues from different disciplines and require people from disciplines to work together. Hence, IPECP allows me to develop the necessary inter-personal skills in communicating and cooperating with people from diverse background. The programme also allows me to step out of my comfort zone in applying knowledge in a new setting and broadened my horizons by collaborating with students form different faculties. ”

~Christine Chan (BBA(Law) & LLB4)