2018 International Health Fusion Team Challenge Overview
Indigenous Allied Health Australia (IAHA) hosted its first International Indigenous HealthFusion Team Challenge (HFTC) from the 1st to 3rd December in Sydney, sponsored by First People’s Health Unit, Griffith University.
The IAHA HFTC is a fun and interactive experience where Indigenous students participate in a clinical and cultural event to share and learn from Indigenous and First Nation University students from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
This year’s event hosted 8 teams (6 from Australia, 1 from New Zealand and 1 from Canada). We had a total of 43 Indigenous University health students compete from Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
The IAHA HFTC is an extracurricular competition for university students from the health and medical professions. It provides students with an opportunity to demonstrate their expertise in teamwork, collaboration and leadership as they develop a healthcare management plan in response to a complex Indigenous case study.
This year’s case involved a complex case of a young Indigenous woman with an acquired brain injury. All students are put into multidisciplinary teams and they need to learn how to work and value each other and respond with a care plan that includes the individual, family and the determinants of health. The teams work with professional mentors, cultural mentors and student mentors to help them build these management plans and present to the participants.
This year’s event saw the students compete against each other in the heats and it was so close that the judging panel had a hard decision to find the top 2 teams to go through to the finals so we ended up having a true Tri-Nations showdown in the Finals between Australia (The Black Pearls), New Zealand (Nga Wai 6 Poroporo) and Canada (Smoked Salmon). It was a very close competition and team Canada; Smoked Salmon took out the challenge after demonstrating to the panel of judges their team’s response to the 2 very complex extension questions given to the teams. Well done to team Canada for taking out the com petition and it was great to see the international relationships and learnings established between students and mentors.
During the IAHA HFTC event our Professional Mentors provided Leadership awards to individual health students that demonstrated leadership in teamwork, respectful relationships, support for others and really valued the spirit of the HFTC. All prizes provided were sponsored by Australian Council of Deans of Health Science (ACDHS).