Inter-professional education in health and social care is a priority for improving team-working and communication. Currently nursing and social work students have limited opportunities to learn together, and as they will ultimately work in professional practice settings side by side, a good understanding of each other’s roles is essential.

It is equally important that students learn about the service user or carer’s perspective during their professional programmes. This will enable students to increase their awareness of everyday issues and challenges that users and carers face. It will also increase their empathy and communication skills, which is important in terms of employability.

A World café is currently an under-used learning and teaching method that provides an opportunity for conversations that matter to those involved. Providing students and service user and carer colleagues with the chance to create their own learning situation was a central part of this project. The broad subject chosen was mental health as this was relevant to all students’ practice, and affects one in four of the population.

The College of Human and Health Sciences seeks to increase its involvement with local people across all programmes, and for service users and carers this gave opportunity for further involvement in professional education. The project was funded by a Higher Education Academy Teaching development grant.

What is World Café?

“World Café can be modified to meet a wide variety of needs. Specifics of context, numbers, purpose, location, and other circumstances are factored into each event's unique invitation, design, and question choice, but the following five components comprise the basic model:

1) Setting: Create a "special" environment, most often modelled after a café, i.e. small round tables covered with a checkered tablecloth, butcher block paper, colored pens, a vase of flowers, and optional "talking stick" item. There should be four chairs at each table.

2) Welcome and Introduction: The host begins with a warm welcome and an introduction to the World Café process, setting the context, sharing the Cafe Etiquette, and putting participants at ease.

3) Small Group Rounds: The process begins with the first of three or more twenty minute rounds of conversation for the small group seated around a table. At the end of the twenty minutes, each member of the group moves to a different new table. They may or may not choose to leave one person as the "table host" for the next round, who welcomes the next group and briefly fills them in on what happened in the previous round.

4) Questions: each round is prefaced with a question designed for the specific context and desired purpose of the session. The same questions can be used for more than one round, or they can be built upon each other to focus the conversation or guide its direction.

5) Harvest: After the small groups (and/or in between rounds, as desired) individuals are invited to share insights or other results from their conversations with the rest of the large group. These results are reflected visually in a variety of ways, most often using graphic recorders in the front of the room.”

http://www.theworldcafe.com/method.html

Learning approach -

This participatory action research approach involved students and service users working together from the beginning. A project steering group was established with student and user/carer volunteers and staff. The students and users and carers discussed and debated topics together in the classroom prior to the event. This included material they wanted to include at the World café, and suggested learning outcomes.

The steering group led on resource planning and developing the accompanying research design and process.

The World café event was held on 9^th November 2012, with 84 3^rd year students, 14 service users and carers and 4 voluntary sector staff attending. The programme ran from 10am til 4pm using a café menu as a programme, which featured questions for discussion as ‘Starters’, ‘Main course’ and ‘Dessert’. The day also featured a Question Time type panel, with audience participation. Throughout the day students and users and carers moved around tables to discuss mental health issues. A variety of learning activities were utilised, including icebreakers, video clips and artwork. Voluntary sector staff also displayed information stands about their organisations. 

Evaluation –

This was captured on the day through forms completed by each table group, which included:

Did it work?

The involvement of students and service users and carers throughout the project led to a high level of engagement and interest.

82% of students agreed that Inter-professional learning will have a positive impact on service users’ mental health care. 91% of students agreed they would like to participate in inter-professional learning with other health and social care professionals again in the future.

Student and service user perspectives:

Future Developments

Teaching teams in the university have requested further information as to how a world café approach could be used in their teaching activities (happy to come and discuss). There are plans to use this approach for further large group work sessions in the new pre-registration nursing curriculum. 

SALT Conference 2013 Presentation