Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Education: Are We Educating for Future Practice?

Abstract

Interdisciplinary practice is encouraged and even mandated in many health care settings, however teams often do not live up to their potential. Interdisciplinary education pre-qualification is frequently recommended to prepare students for team practice after graduation. This paper describes a brief survey of interdisciplinary educational activities of occupational therapy and physiotherapy programmes in Canada. Questions were asked about current activities, anticipated changes, and the level of formal institutional support for interdisciplinary education. Results indicate that interdisciplinary activities are encouraged now and many programmes hope to expand in the future. The authors suggest that using a model to guide interdisciplinary experiences at the undergraduate level may be helpful in educating for future practice.