Faculty development in interprofessional education (IPE): Reflections from an IPE coordinator

Abstract

Abstract Objectives Faculty development in interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional collaboration (IPC) is an important component enabling the cultural shift towards this new mode of education and practice. Most published studies describing interprofessional faculty development focus on facilitating interprofessional groups of learners without consideration of the much larger role that faculty can play as interprofessional ambassadors. This paper aims to describe strategies that fostered interprofessional faculty development within the University of Manitoba IPE Initiative (the Initiative) between 2008 and 2015, highlight exemplars that were implemented and evaluated, and offer reflections from the IPE coordinator. Methods Three overarching strategies fostered interprofessional faculty development within the Initiative: developing interprofessional ambassadors through leadership training; using an adoption model framework that explicitly identified interprofessional faculty development as one key micro-component; and actualizing partnerships within and between academia, practitioners and the government. Results Interprofessional faculty development opportunities for non-practice- and practice-based faculty are described, and evaluation results are presented. The strategies were aligned with most, if not all, of the seven previously published recommended approaches to interprofessional faculty development. Based on the number of participants and evaluation results, the interprofessional faculty development opportunities offered through the Initiative were effective in raising faculty awareness of IPE and IPC and improving perceived interprofessional facilitation skills. Conclusion Upon reflection, the Initiative's interprofessional faculty development undertakings were reactive as opposed to strategic. Future recommendations include reaching consensus on a broad definition of faculty development, adopting a theoretical framework to guide the stated learning outcomes, and developing observation-based assessment strategies to measure the achievement of interprofessional learning outcomes.