Interprofessional education between dentistry and pharmacy students: delivery, barriers and facilitating implementation.

Abstract

Interprofessional education (IPE) between dentistry and pharmacy students is an approach to teach effective collaborative practice between a team of future health care providers. It relies on the support and motivation of students, staff and professionals to implement a variety of educational strategies and might involve evaluating student progression before and after delivery. Many barriers exist towards the implementation of IPE between dentistry and pharmacy health disciplines and outlining experiences across educational/clinical practice settings and possible solutions would assist in reducing those walls to realization. Implementation of IPE between pharmacy and dentistry undergraduate programs might lead to improved workplace collaborations and reduce medication errors, adverse events and increase in cross-referrals. Interprofessional education within undergraduate training forms the first steps towards reducing the burden on health care systems by enabling effective collaboration to improve patient outcomes. This narrative review describes IPE strategies used between pharmacy and dentistry undergraduate disciplines to enable collaboration, discusses the barriers and facilitators towards implementing IPE, and future directions for IPE education between these two disciplines.