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AIM:

To explore the perceptions of staff working in and referring to community-based intermediate care teams in Wales.

BACKGROUND:

Central and devolved governments have high expectations of intermediate care to promote independence and quality of life for older people and to solve the system pressures within the acute hospital sector. Developing an evidence base of the effectiveness of a model of care that is characterized by diversity and difference in practice is problematic.

METHOD:

Teamwork, collaboration and interprofessional care are becoming the new standard in health care, and service delivery in work practice is no exception. Most rehabilitation professionals believe that they intuitively know how to work collaboratively with others such as workers, employers, insurers and other professionals. However, little information is available that can assist rehabilitation professionals in enacting authentic transdisciplinary approaches in work practice contexts.

UK government policy is encouraging healthcare staff to blur traditional roles, in the drive to increase joint working between practitioners. However, there is currently a lack of clarity regarding the impact that changes to traditional working practice might have on staff delivering the services, or on patient care. In this article, we report findings from three qualitative case studies examining interprofessional practice in stroke care, in which the influence of professional differences emerged as a significant theme.

Primary health care is undergoing significant organizational change, including the development of interdisciplinary health care teams. Understanding how teams function effectively in primary care will assist training programs in teaching effective interprofessional practices. This study aimed to explore the views of members of primary health care teams regarding what constitutes a team, team effectiveness and the factors that affect team effectiveness in primary care.

BACKGROUND: Interprofessional practice has increasingly been recognized as important for chronic illness care. Recently, several health care professional-accrediting bodies have called for integration of interprofessional care and education. The shared medical appointment (SMA) is an interprofessional practice model that provides an educational opportunity.

OBJECTIVE: A description of this innovative educational model, the challenges associated with the implementation, and the evaluation are presented.

METHOD: Mixed quantitative and qualitative analysis were utilized.

Clinical practice provides the stimulus for students and practitioners alike to recognise best practice and, if necessary, enhance and modify existing practice. Increasingly, literature related to health service delivery and health workforce planning focuses on the need for collaborative interprofessional work practices.

PROBLEM ADDRESSED:

The new family health teams (FHTs) in Ontario were designed to enable interprofessional collaborative practice in primary care; however, many health professionals have not been trained in an interprofessional environment.

OBJECTIVE OF PROGRAM:

To provide health professional learners with an interprofessional practice experience in primary care that models teamwork and collaborative practice skills.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:

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.

This paper describes the articulation of a model of interprofessional mentorship derived from qualitative interviews with students and health and social care professionals who support students in practice settings. The findings describe three core components within the data: the facilitation of interprofessional learning; supervision of students and assessment of their learning. These components interact with the aim of developing interprofessional capability in students.