Interprofessional Education For Collaborative Practice Research Articles

What about us?: a call to include oral health professions within interprofessional education for collaborative practice

ABSTRACT Interprofessional collaboration (IPC) among the health professions is recognised as a vital component of efficient health systems and comprehensive healthcare teams. Interprofessional education for collaborative practice (IPECP) is foundational for health professional students to gain an understanding of professional roles, responsibilities, and the value of other professions to patient care. Oral health professionals are highly skilled and knowledgeable experts who recognise the oral-systemic health link. However, they have been largely excluded from, and underutilised within primary healthcare settings and interprofessional teams. Given that oral health is a key indicator of overall health and wellbeing, there is a need mobilise oral health professionals within primary healthcare practice. Yet, advancements for IPECP in oral health education face significant barriers which impede the integration of the oral health professions within interprofessional teams. Collaborative approaches across health programmes to devise intentional, authentic, and transformative strategies for IPECP are needed to bridge gaps in patient care and to dismantle problematic perceptions of ‘oral health’ as distinct from overall health and wellbeing in contemporary healthcare practice.

A longitudinal study of interprofessional education experiences among health professional graduates.

Effective teamwork and collaboration among health professionals is a well-recognized strategy toward enhancing patient outcomes. However, there is a lack of understanding on how to best prepare health professionals for collaborative practice. The aim of this research is to gain a better understanding of how graduates of five health professions (dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physiotherapy) perceive and experience interprofessional education for collaborative practice (IPECP) throughout their health professions journey, with a focus on transition to practice. This longitudinal study employed an interpretive, narrative methodology to understand interprofessional identity development of 24 individuals who had recently graduated from a health professions program (dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physiotherapy) at a Canadian university. Participant experiences were analyzed using narrative analysis. Participants' narratives provided insight into the context, factors and curricular experiences needed for interprofessional identity development and preparedness for collaborative practice. Participants identified the importance of socialization and connection with others, collaborative role models and exposure to collaborative experiences and settings for interprofessional practice. Participants expressed some dissatisfaction with their earliest IPECP experiences and most valued their exposure to 'real-life' practice examples and clinical scenarios. Participants desired more authentic experiences of interprofessional collaboration during their programs. Improving health professionals' interprofessional socialization and collaborative experiences within IPECP is critical to improving patient outcomes. Study findings can inform future curricula and IPECP strategies that create conditions to enhance collaborative practice and ensure the preparedness of a future health workforce with a strong collaborative identity.

Interprofessional collaboration: A public policy healthcare transformation call for action

The United States faces a health system crisis from evolving and lingering social, economic, and political issues complicated by a global pandemic. However, it is the same crisis that presents opportunities for transformation as the nation evaluates how best to address the vulnerabilities, inequities, and inefficiencies of fragmented healthcare exposed during a period of extreme systemic strain on the healthcare system. The National Academies of Practice (NAP) is well positioned as the oldest interprofessional health sciences organization, to lead advocacy efforts in a comprehensive approach for inclusive care that is modeled on interprofessional collaborative practice. NAP recognizes that the scope of healthcare extends traditional hospital boundaries into communities and homes. Further, NAP advocates for intentional interprofessional education of pre-licensure and post-licensure health professionals as a requirement to foster a paradigm shift in healthcare where the patient and family are central and active members of decision making. The purpose of this paper is to provide an explanation of the ongoing strategic goals, initiatives, and core tenets of NAP that are focused on Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (IPCP), Interprofessional Education (IPE), and now Interprofessional Education for Collaborative Practice (IPECP). Further, NAP examines current healthcare system issues in a defining manner and offers viable action plans for NAP and others to support a paradigm shift in the framework for health system transformation.

Celebrating the Culture of Interprofessional Collaboration in Athletic Training

Celebrating the Culture of Interprofessional Collaboration in Athletic Training

Embedding the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health in Health Professions Curricula to Enable Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice.

The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (WHO-ICF) is a comprehensive and highly adaptable framework that provides a universal language and shared health concepts to articulate human functioning across the lifespan and from individual to population health settings. It provides a global, biopsychosocial, and holistic structure for conceptualising the human experience of health and health service provision. Consequently, the ICF framework offers hope for a universal map for health service providers that bridges professional, cultural, economic, and geographical variations. While the use of the ICF is typically mandated by health professions accreditation bodies, integration of the ICF in medical and health professional education programmes has been slow. In addition, its potential for scaffolding interprofessional education for collaborative practice has not been maximised. In this Perspective paper, we draw on our extensive experience in developing curricula and teaching within a range of health professions programmes (medicine, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, and speech-language pathology) to provide advice on conceptual, theoretical, and practical dimensions of embedding the ICF framework within curricula to support interprofessional education and collaborative practice.

Integrating Geropsychiatric Nursing and Interprofessional Collaborative Practice Competencies Into Adult-Gerontology Clinical Nurse Specialist Education.

Specific changes to the national clinical nurse specialist (CNS) certification are necessitating a move away the psychiatric/mental health (P/MH) CNS population focus. However, a rapidly increasing older adult population with P/MH comorbidities such as depression and anxiety means that the adult-gerontology CNS (AGCNS) will likely be coordinating much of the complex care needs of this vulnerable population. Therefore, strategies are needed to ensure AGCNSs are competent in advanced practice P/MH nursing. In addition, at this critical time in the redesign of healthcare, the Institute of Medicine has made interprofessional practice center stage for healthcare professional education. Therefore, the purpose of this manuscript is to propose aligning the current AGCNS population-focused competencies with the CNS geropsychiatric nursing competency enhancements and interprofessional collaborative practice education competencies. Examples of the proposed alignment and educational application strategies are presented. When AGCNS educational curricula encompass P/MH nursing at an advanced level from an interprofessional perspective, future AGCNSs will continue to be positioned to make significant contributions to the design of care systems and monitor and trend important outcomes, while ensuring safe and efficient, high-quality healthcare for older adults with P/MH comorbidities.

Inter-Professional Education for Collaborative Practice in Health Care

Today’s health care delivery is increasingly complex and the complex needs of patients demand that health professionals communicate and collaborate to deliver the best care. Governments around the world are looking for innovative solutions that will ensure the appropriate supply, mix and distribution of the health workforce. One of the most promising solutions can be found in inter-professional education (IPE) and collaboration. IPE occurs when students from different professions learn together at some point during their training in order to prepare them to work together in health teams. Unfortunately most health professional training institutions provide little or no opportunity for IPE. Effective inter-professional education (IPE) fosters respect among the health professions, eliminates negative stereotypes, and fosters a team approach in health care. At the same time quality of care is improved when health professionals learn together. These considerations mean that the approach and content of medical, nursing and other curricula must adapt to adequately prepare health professionals to practice within the health team model. This will require the implementation of well-planned educational strategies; so that health professionals learn together in order to work together in coordinated manner to deliver person-centred and team-based health care. The paper highlights key issues in IPE and its benefits in the delivery of quality health care and improved patient safety through collaborative practice.

Abraham Flexner and the roots of interprofessional education

This paper explores the culture underlying the practices of physicians and other health care providers in the 20th century and implications for interprofessional education for collaborative practice in the 21st century. Today's practice of medicine flows from the 1920s work of Dr. Abraham Flexner recommending that North American medical schools introduce rigor and consistency in teaching, moving them from private, for-profit, somewhat ad hoc institutions to university affiliation employing physicians dedicated to teaching and research. The education of physicians and other providers was transformed by Flexner's work. However, a sequela has been the "stovepiping" of professions, in both their education and their practices, with minimal interaction among professions, and provider- or system-centric care rather than patient-centric care. The result has been learning environments that lack sympathy for interprofessional education and its concomitant of learning and working together.