Interprofessional Team Practice Research Articles

Teaching the Science of Safety in US Colleges and Schools of Pharmacy

This paper provides baseline information on integrating the science of safety into the professional degree curriculum at colleges and schools of pharmacy. A multi-method examination was conducted that included a literature review, key informant interviews of 30 individuals, and in-depth case studies of 5 colleges and schools of pharmacy. Educators believe that they are devoting adequate time to science of safety topics and doing a good job teaching students to identify, understand, report, manage, and communicate medication risk. Areas perceived to be in need of improvement include educating pharmacy students about the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) role in product safety, how to work with the FDA in post-marketing surveillance and other FDA safety initiatives, teaching students methods to improve safety, and educating students to practice in interprofessional teams. The report makes 10 recommendations to help pharmacy school graduates be more effective in protecting patients from preventable drug-related problems.

Extending the team component of the Latimer ethical decision-making model for palliative care

Extending the team component of the Latimer ethical decision-making model for palliative care Mary Ellen Purkis1, Elizabeth Borycki1,2, Craig Kuziemsky3, Fraser Black4, Denise Cloutier-Fisher5, Lee Ann Fox6, Patricia MacKenzie7, Ann Syme1,8, Coby Tschanz1,41School of Nursing, 2School of Health Information Science, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia; 3Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario; 4Victoria Hospice Society, Victoria, British Columbia; 5Department of Geography, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia; 6Kingston General Hospital, Kingston, Ontario; 7School of Social Work, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia; 8British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver Island Centre, Victoria, British Columbia, CanadaBackground: Each year more than 240,000 Canadians die from terminal and chronic illnesses. It is estimated that 62% of those deaths require palliative care. Palliative care is a specialized domain of health professional team practice that requires discipline-specific knowledge, skills, judgment, and expertise in order to address patient hopes, wishes, symptoms, and suffering. With the emergence of palliative care as a specialized area of interdisciplinary practice, new practice models have also emerged, eg, the Latimer ethical decision-making model for palliative care. The purpose of this research was to undertake a descriptive ethnographic field study of palliative care team practices to understand better the interdisciplinary team communication and the issues that arise when members of different health professions work together as a team.Methods: Study data were collected by observing and videotaping palliative care team meetings. Data were then analyzed using direct content analysis.Results: The study findings substantiated many of the team practice concepts outlined in Latimer's model. Palliative care teams engage in a number of processes that address patient symptoms, suffering, hopes, and plans. However, several new findings also emerged from the data that were not explicit in Latimer's original model. Teams employed five additional emergent team processes when addressing patient symptoms and suffering while attempting to fulfill patient hopes and plans. Those five team processes included explicating practice norms, leadership, provider assumptions, interdisciplinary teaching, and patient safety.Conclusion: Although many team processes have been identified by practice models in the literature, there is a need to study the applicability of these models empirically to validate their representation of aspects of team practice.Keywords: interprofessional team practice, palliative care, ethics, ethnography