Achieving the unachievable: the development of a large-scale interprofessional education workshop for first-year health professional students. Developing a large-scale interprofessional education workshop

Abstract

he need for interprofessional education within healthcare education is widely accepted, yet healthcare educators continue to grapple with the challenges associated with integrating authentic interprofessional learning activities within curricula. Timetabling conflicts, shortage of teaching spaces, geographical separation, the need for educator training, varying assessment needs, lack of organisational commitment, and suboptimal attitude by faculties towards Interprofessional Education, continue to be identified as barriers making it seemingly unachievable by many. We describe an introductory Interprofessional Education workshop that was successfully delivered to over 2600 first-year health students across 13 health disciplines at an Australian university, demonstrating how as a team of interprofessional educators we achieved the unachievable, successfully overcoming many of the obstacles to IPE. We outline the importance of authentic learning activities constructively aligned to learning outcomes and assessment, and the necessity of student, early facilitator, and faculty engagement, to overcome logistical and practical challenges. Finally, we discuss the changes to the workshop necessitated COVID-19, and future challenges and directions.