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Personnel shortages are evident for a number of disciplines in the health professions, from physicians to nurses. Project CRISTAL (Collaborative Rural Interdisciplinary Service Training and Learning) was designed to immerse students in rural and reservation communities and encourage them to consider practicing in locations that have shortages of health care providers. Students gain an understanding of the importance of working as part of a health care team and address present and future health care workforce shortages.

The 'Professionals in Rural Practice' course was developed with the aim of preparing students enrolled in professional programs in Canada to become better equipped for the possible eventuality of professional work in a rural setting. To match the reality of living and working in a rural community, which by nature is interprofessional, the course designers were an interprofessional teaching team.

The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) developed a Presidential Scholars Program (PSP) in order to foster interprofessional collaboration among students from the different health professions on campus. Now in its seventh year, the program provides approximately 40 selected students each year from six different colleges with a two-semester interprofessional educational experience. Students work in small interprofessional teams on a project designed to address a broad-based health care issue; they also participate in other structured educational sessions throughout the year.

Interprofessional working is an important NHS policy aim (Department of Health 2000; Barrett et al 2005), which has meant that interprofessional education (IPE) is an increasingly important topic for higher education institutions (Caldwell and Atwal, 2003; Barr and Ross, 2006). The argument for IPE is based on the assumption that it will enhance interprofessional working and assist in ameliorating many of the challenges of contemporary health-care. However, there is a dearth of evidence of the effectiveness of IPE in the UK, particularly at undergraduate level.

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

Most shared decision-making (SDM) models within healthcare have been limited to the patient-physician dyad. As a first step towards promoting an interprofessional approach to SDM in primary care, this article reports how an interprofessional and interdisciplinary group developed and achieved consensus on a new interprofessional SDM model. The key concepts within published reviews of SDM models and interprofessionalism were identified, analysed, and discussed by the group in order to reach consensus on the new interprofessional SDM (IP-SDM) model.

Interprofessional practice (IP)--ie, collaborative practice--involves interaction and knowledge-sharing between professionals from different disciplines in order to meet the needs of the patient. This approach to care is well suited to patients with pressure ulcers, whose complex and varying presentations require the monitoring and consultation of an IP team. A 44-year-old man with anoxic brain injury was admitted to a complex continuing care facility with 18 wounds, 17 of which were pressure ulcers.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21425916

While much literature describes programmatic success of clinical service-learning opportunities, this initiative integrates student learning across a comprehensive discipline set (Dental Medicine, Graduate Studies, Health Administration, Medicine, Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Pharmacy, Physical Therapy, and Physician Assistant), providing preventive health education and role modeling to low-income elementary-school children.

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.