Mentorship and Interprofessional Education

This course provides students with opportunities to build reflective, collaborative learning and teamwork skills for professional practice.

Mentorship

Throughout the two years of the MScOT program, students work in assigned mentor groups with an experienced occupational therapist as their Mentor. These mentor groups offer a platform for students to develop and enhance intrapersonal, interpersonal, and interprofessional skills through guided interactive sessions that focus on self-reflection, self-care, collaborative learning with construcve feedback, and effecve teamwork. The course's learning objectives align with the regulatory requirements for occupational therapy practice set by the College of Occupational Therapists of Ontario (COTO), as well as the Competencies for Occupational Therapists in Canada (2021). Mentors play a vital role in guiding students' professional development and are chosen as role models for their mentoring skills and professionalism. Students, faculty, or other clinicians nominate mentors. In the mentorship setting, Mentors create an atmosphere of safety and freedom that encourages students to explore their abilities in dealing with challenging professional issues that arise during the academic and fieldwork components of the program. Each student has been assigned to a specific Mentor Group, and the name of the assigned mentor can be found on Quercus.

Interprofessional Education Curriculum

There are foundational, elective and placement components in U of T’s Interfaculty Interprofessional Education (IPE) program.

Foundational: In Year 1, the three requisite foundational IPE learning activities include:

1. Why Collaborative Healthcare? Learning From Stories and Science,
2. How To Work Together? Valuing Perspectives and Challenging Assumptions
3. Cultivating Team Partnerships: Learning From Lived Experiences.

In required programming, students work with student health professionals from dentistry, kinesiology, nursing, medical radiation sciences, medicine, pharmacy, physical therapy, speech-language pathology, social work, spiritual care, and the physician assistant program.

Elective: Students must also complete at least three elective learning activities, with at least one in the second year. Approved elective IPE learning activities will be posted on the Centre for Advancing Collaborartive Healthcare & Eductiaon (CACHE) website here. CACHE administrators regularly send emails to inform students about upcoming elective options and registration dates. Electives may be single, stand-alone or longitudinal learning activities.