On 13 and 14 June 2014 two Pharmacy students, Gladys Maponese and Holly Smith, represented the School at the Universitas 21 United Nations Millennium Development Goals (UNMDG) Workshop in Dublin, along with students studying nursing, midwifery, physiotherapy, dietetics, medicine and other healthcare disciplines.
The programme included talks on the UNMDGs and our progress towards meeting them, Global Health and a trial project in a community in Zambia, which aims to increase the number of women who choose to give birth in hospital. The students also worked in small groups on case studies, considering which UNMDGs were involved, how we might make interventions to improve or resolve the situation, and how we can reflect on the cases to improve our practice as healthcare professionals. At the end of the workshop each group presented their case, findings and reflections for practice.
The key messages from the workshop included the value of taking a multidisciplinary approach, prevention being preferable to cure and the fact that the eight UNMDGs are very much inter-related and do not stand in isolation. Working with other healthcare students provided a fantastic opportunity for interprofessional learning and to view problems from alternative perspectives, as well as to network with students from other disciplines and universities across the world.
Posted on Monday 30th June 2014