Abstract
Interprofessional collaboration is an important aspect of delivering healthcare. However, helping students learn to work with other health professions continues to pose challenges. Students’ interprofessional relationships are an important aspect of learning to work with other professions. The complexity of educators’ interprofessional relationships is less easily recognised. Existing relationships between educators were the intentional foundation underpinning the development and implementation of a recent interprofessional workplace learning initiative over 18 months involving undergraduate students from speech pathology (n = 12) and nutrition and dietetics (n = 18) programs. As part of a larger collaborative inquiry, educators involved in the initiative explored the nature of interprofessional relationships involved in developing, delivering and participating in the initiative. The aim was to develop a deeper understanding of such interprofessional relationships in order to provide guidance for ongoing development of students’ and educators’ collaborative practice. Transcripts of five focus groups undertaken with students (n = 5), academic educators (n = 4) and clinical educators (n = 4) were compiled into a text set and interpreted using tools of philosophical hermeneutics. Findings of this study were iteratively dialogued with earlier findings of the collaborative dialogical inquiry to ensure “fusion of horizons” between studies. The three interpreted themes transcended professional affiliations: facilitating interprofessional mutuality, appreciating the multifaceted nature of “respect” and considering the visibility of interprofessional relationships. The themes highlighted the importance of educators’ ongoing development and understanding of interprofessional relationships as they help students learn to work with other professions. Based on a practice-based education framework, we pose reflective questions for educators to inform their ongoing development. We conclude that it is important for all those involved in healthcare education to embrace the responsibility of developing interprofessional relationships in an ongoing manner and not view the development of interprofessional relationships solely as the domain of students.
Highlights
Collaboration between health professionals is receiving increasing attention and support as a means to address multiple challenges facing health care systems
The research question we sought to answer was: “In relation to the work-integrated learning IPE (WILIPE) initiative, what is the nature of the interprofessional relationships involved in developing and delivering such an initiative?” The aim of the study was to develop a deeper understanding of the relationships involved in helping students learn to work other professions in order to provide guidance for ongoing development of both students’ and educators’ collaborative practice
In the spirit of lifelong learning, it is important for all those involved in healthcare education to embrace the responsibility of developing interprofessional relationships across academic and workplace settings in an ongoing manner and not view the development of interprofessional relationships solely as the domain of students
Summary
Collaboration between health professionals is receiving increasing attention and support as a means to address multiple challenges facing health care systems. These challenges include the growing number of people with complex chronic health conditions, fragmented healthcare services, increasing specialisation of health professions, the ongoing need for resource efficiency, and humanistic expectations for patient satisfaction and staff wellbeing (WHO 2010; Croker, Croker, & Grotowski, 2014). Despite the recognised importance of collaboration and awareness of barriers to interprofessional relationships, health professionals tend to be educated in discipline-specific university and work-based learning programs. Educators themselves may have experienced difficulties with collaboration in health care systems and bring these to their current educational role in academic or clinical settings
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