The potential for interprofessional education

Abstract

In this chapter, we will explore the central role of patients/service users and carers in interprofessional education (IPE). We base our chapter on experiences of delivering health and social care education in the UK. We recognise that social, economic and political context vary greatly between countries and therefore not all of our recommendations will be applicable elsewhere. Both IPE and service user involvement in health and social care education are innovative and push against traditional boundaries. These maybe more difficult to implement in countries where professions have more hierarchical paternalistic views. However, there is international impetus towards including patients in professional service education. The overarching purpose of IPE is for students from different professions to learn together in an interactive way, for the improvement of care and care delivery services. The UK Centre for the Advancement of IPE (CAIPE), which promotes effective IPE, places patients at the centre of their values and aims. We will share our experiences of working with patients and carers in the design and delivery of IPE, a central theme for the chapter. We will draw on over twenty years of our own experiences of delivering the “Leicester Model” of practice-based IPE. We will share the need for more rigorous understandings of what it means to place patients in the midst of faculty activity systems, considering patients as not just as story tellers but also in leading teaching roles. We will outline some of the barriers relating to faculty structure and consider the potential for patients to have active roles across healthcare faculty. We will also outline the stable place of patient experience at a time of greater complexity and uncertainty about future healthcare delivery structures. “Future proofing” may bring about robotics, new professional roles and patient interactions with artificial intelligence. However, this new era for interprofessional working must place the patient experience at the centre.