Resource Center

Collaborative patient-centred care has the potential to address serious issues in the Canadian health-care system such as those related to increasing complexity of care; patient safety and access; and recruitment and retention of health human resources. This approach involves teams of health professionals working together to provide more coordinated and comprehensive care to clients. It places priority on the preferences of the patient and fosters respect for the skills and perspectives of all health-care providers.

This paper will describe the background and development of the Trent Universities Interprofessional Learning in Practice Project (TUILIP). It will review some of the contributing literature on recent policy initiatives for interprofessional learning (IPL) and in particular the literature that supports the case for IPL to be embedded in the practice learning environment. The impact of IPL on health outcomes is discussed and on team working in practice.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18985547

Successful transition of students to competent work-ready health professionals requires an ability to work in health care teams. Poor communication and teamwork practice has been implicated as a contributing source of error affecting patient safety. Traditional university curriculum structures severely limit the time that students from different professions can spend together, learning about and from each other (interprofessional education [IPE]). IPE initiatives need to focus on whole-of-system impacts and organisational sustainability.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19842956

This article describes how a system of interprofessional learning was established and developed. It gives practical tips on implementation and some short case studies demonstrating how students have benefited from this approach.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19950458

Multidisciplinary fragmentation contributes to myriad medical errors and as many as 98,000 patient deaths per year. The Institute of Medicine has proposed steps to improve healthcare delivery, including providing more opportunities for interdisciplinary training. The authors describe the interprofessional education (IPE) program at Western University of Health Sciences (WesternU) in Pomona, California. In 2007, 9 colleges at WesternU-including the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific-undertook an IPE initiative that resulted in creation of a 3-phase program.

Interprofessional education and ethics education are two educational programs that blend together well, and, moreover, they are a natural fit for teaching in an academic health science center. The purpose of this paper is to describe our recent journey of developing and implementing an interprofessional ethics curriculum across the six schools of UTHealth.

RATIONALE, AIMS AND OBJECTIVES:

OBJECTIVE: This paper describes a model for interprofessional and transcultural learning established by the author and supported by the University of New England and Ghana Health Mission, Inc. The model for interprofessional immersion in cultural settings represents a guiding framework predicated on a conceptual "brick and mortar" process for building cultural proficiency among individuals and within teams. It encompasses social, clinical and behavioral components (brick) and personal desire, cultural humility and values (mortar).