Resource Center

Over the past half century, there have been ebbs and flows of interest in linking what is now called interprofessional education (IPE) with interprofessional collaboration and team-based care. Whereas considerable research has focused on student learning, only recently have researchers begun to look beyond the classroom and beyond learning outcomes for the impact of IPE on such issues as patient safety, patient and provider satisfaction, quality of care, health promotion, population health, and the cost of care.

In 2013, the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education held two workshops on IPE. At these workshops, a number of questions were raised, the most important of which was “What data and metrics are needed to evaluate the impact of IPE on individual, population, and system outcomes?” To answer this question, the Forum’s 47 individual sponsors requested that an IOM consensus committee be convened to examine the existing evidence on this complex issue and consider the potential design of future studies that could expand this evidence base.