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Placing our practicum students into an interprofessional education (IPE) practicum without prior course work is an unorthodox idea, however, it was discovered that the road to IPE success is not along a single pathway. This multi-case study explores the experience of seven cohorts of pre-service professionals from the faculties of Education, Nursing, Justice Studies, Kinesiology and Health Studies and Social Work who engaged in a 14-week, full-time interprofessional internship in inner-city schools.

AIM: This paper is a report of a study exploring the perceptions of long-term care team members and nurse managers about barriers and facilitators to optimal use of nurse practitioners to manage residents' pain in long-term care settings.

BACKGROUND: Considering the high rates of pain in long-term care, research is needed to explore innovations in health-services delivery, including the emerging nurse practitioner role.

In this paper, the authors present the results of a study which delineated six key competencies of interprofessional collaborative practice for patient-centred care: communication; strength in one's professional role; knowledge of professional role of others; leadership; team function; and negotiation for conflict resolution.

We describe the impact of an interprofessional education programme in mental health for professionals in six rural Canadian communities. The 10-session programme, offered primarily via videoconference, focussed on eight domains of mental health practice. One hundred and twenty-five professionals, representing 15 professions, attended at least some sessions, although attendance was variable. Data were collected between September 2006 and December 2007. The programme was evaluated using a mixed methods approach.

Primary care reform involving interprofessional team-based care is a global phenomenon. In Ontario, Canada, 150 Family Health Teams (FHTs) have been approved in the past few years. The transition to a FHT is complex involving many changes and the processes for collaborative teamwork are not clearly delineated. To support the transition to team-based care in FHTs, a project was undertaken to develop and implement a series of interprofessional protocols in four clinical areas.

OBJECTIVE:

To examine family health team (FHT) members' perspectives and experiences of interprofessional collaboration and perceived benefits.

DESIGN:

Qualitative case study using semistructured interviews.

SETTING:

Fourteen FHTs in urban and rural Ontario.

PARTICIPANTS:

Purposeful sample of the members of 14 FHTs, including family physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, dietitians, social workers, pharmacists, and managers.

METHODS:

Increasingly, primary health care teams (PHCTs) depend on the contributions of multiple professionals. However, conflict is inevitable on teams. This article examines PHCTs members' experiences with conflict and responses to conflict. This phenomenological study was conducted using in-depth interviews with 121 participants from 16 PHCTs (10 urban and 6 rural) including a wide range of health care professionals. An iterative analysis process was used to examine the verbatim transcripts.

CONTEXT:

Interprofessional education (IPE) has been gaining traction in post-secondary institutions. Many schools introduce IPE early to their health professional students, often in the context of a large-scale event in Year 1. This paper presents findings from a study undertaken by a medical student (a classmate of the research participants) and details Year 1 students' initial perceptions of IPE.

METHODS:

This qualitative study explored new nurses' experience of their role within interprofessional health care teams in a mental health organization in Canada. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 10 nurses. Content analysis revealed two main themes, namely, adopting a passive role to learn how to fit in and engaging in an active role to impact on patient care. Establishing credibility and building trust were central to the new nurses' transition from a passive to a more active role. Interpersonal and organizational factors contributed to the transition.

Expansion of the nurse practitioner (NP) role worldwide indicates a need to understand how the role functions in interprofessional healthcare teams. Through the adoption of a mixed methods approach that gathered on-site tracking and observation, self-recorded logs of consultations and focus group interviews of team members and NPs, we describe the extent of role activity and the nature of interprofessional practices of 46 NPs and their team members in nine hospital sites across the province of Ontario, Canada.