A Community of Practice (CoP) is defined as: “A group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.”(1) CoP’s are usually informal, self-organising, and span across departments with members distributed throughout an organisation.
To that end, communication within the online CoP must be supportive and encouraging for all participants to develop their knowledge and confidence within palliative care practice. The National PEPA team has created the following information to create understanding and guide each person to comment on PEPA post-placement activity blogs.

Supportive Feedback Information

House Rules

The CoP page is an open forum and to ensure everyone can participate without being exposed to inappropriate content, offensive language or discriminatory views we have put some house rules in place below.

NB. If you have health-related questions or are in an emergency situation, please call Triple Zero (000) (if calling from within Australia). This forum is not designed to address emergency calls or provide direct healthcare advice.

Comment Policy

By commenting within the CoP page you have agreed to adhere to the following Comment policy.

While this is an open forum, it is also a supportive learning-friendly one, so please keep your comments polite and respectful. When contributing, do not post any material that contains:

• hate speech
• profanity, obscenity or vulgarity
• comments that could be considered prejudicial, racist or inflammatory
• nudity or offensive imagery in profile pictures
• defamation to a person or people
• name calling and/or personal attacks
• comments whose main purpose are to sell a product
• comments that infringe on copyright:
  • spam comments from individuals or groups, such as the same comment posted repeatedly on a profile
  • personal information about you or another individual (including identifying information, email addresses, phone numbers or private addresses)
  • false representation of another individual, organisation, government or entity
  • promotion of a product, business, company or organisation

PEPA/IPEPA retains the right to remove any content that does not comply with our Comment Policy or that the PEPA National team deems inappropriate.

Privacy

PEPA/IPEPA does not collect, maintain, or disseminate information you provide to this website. However, links and references to CoP content will be made in PEPA social media channels from time to time.

Although you may voluntarily contribute to PEPA/IPEPA with the intent to share the information with others on the CoP page, to protect your privacy, please do not disclose personal information about yourself or others.

PEPA/IPEPA does not collect personally identifiable information such as your name, address, or telephone number from this website. PEPA/IPEPA will not contact you directly via phone, mail, or email attempting to solicit information from you unless you request contact through a private message or via email, or you have previously signed up to receive email updates.

PEPA/IPEPA is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and is delivered by Queensland University of Technology (QUT). As a QUT project, QUT’s Privacy Policy (the Policy) applies to PEPA/IPEPA. For further information or questions please email pepa@qut.edu.au

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Who manages the CoP page?

A: The PEPA National Project team in collaboration with the PEPA/IPEPA jurisdictional team members manage the content, posts and updates published on the CoP page. Content is moderated by a person with appropriate expertise to monitor the quality of the information posted. Internet users posting comments on this blog should not be considered as health professionals.

Q: Why was my comment / post removed?

A: We expect participants on this site to treat each other with respect. As such, we sometimes remove comments for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the language or tone of the comment is offensive. Other times the comment is simply off topic, and not relevant to the discussion to which it was posted.

Q: Can I share or copy material from the CoP page?

A: Yes. You can share CoP posts with others as this is how we network our messages.

Q: Who can see what I write on the CoP page?

A: Because our PEPA/IPEPA website CoP page is a public page, any comment or post will be visible by anyone who looks at our site. Users do not have the ability or access to erase their own comments.

Q: How does the information on the CoP page complement PEPA networking?

A: Comments posted on this Blog are intended to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between a PEPA placement participant and experienced palliative care specialist healthcare worker / professional.

Reference: 1. Wenger E, McDermott R, Snyder W.  (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge (Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA).