Professor Sue Pullon's Inaugural Professorial Lecture

The Inaugural Professorial Lecture Series 2017

Professor Sue Pullon
Head of Department of Primary Health Care and General Practice
University of Otago, Wellington

Competence, respect and trust: hallmarks of collaborative practice?

Synopsis

Health professionals need to work effectively together for safe high-quality patient care. The world is changing fast—young people face choices and realities unimagined until recently; more people than ever before are living longer and expectations of care continue to increase. So large and small health care teams now need to function continuously, concurrently and effectively at many organisational, practice and individual levels. Patients and whānau are essential team members too.

Yet just how people collaborate is not well-understood. Traditionally in health, collaborative skills been largely ignored, badly practiced and poorly taught. The people who miss out most in a non-collaborative system are those already at some disadvantage—Māori and Pacific peoples, young people, those who live rurally, those with insecure income, and those with complicated health conditions are all less likely to get safe high-quality health care.

I'm going to talk about "interprofessionality", and consider how powerful collaborative practice can be. I'll talk about how interprofessional education can help, honour our primary health care context, and share something of my own journey as a clinician, an educator, a researcher and a New Zealander.

Professor Susan Pullon

MPHC DipGP DipObstet CertTertTchg FRNZCGP(Dist) MB ChB

Sue is Professor and Head of Department, Primary Health Care and General Practice, University of Otago, Wellington; and more recently also the Director of Otago's Interprofessional Education (IPE) Centre. From 2012, she led the development of the Tairāwhiti Interprofessional Education (IPE) programme for undergraduates, building on her extensive health professional teaching experience.

Sue's research areas of expertise are health professional and interprofessional education, collaborative practice and integrated care. She also has strong professional and research interests in sexual and reproductive health, particularly in relation to health education and promotion for young people. As a health educator, she continues to be the lead author of the New Zealand Pregnancy Book, into its third edition and in print for 24 years. Sue has been a GP for over 30 years, and in 2009 was awarded a Distinguished Fellowship of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners for her contribution to research and education.

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