Resource Center

BACKGROUND: An international consensus has emerged that interprofessional education (IPE) and other health care reforms are necessary to address the increasing complexity of patients' health needs. Despite overwhelming barriers to its system-wide implementation, health professional students worldwide have organized themselves to promote IPE and have achieved considerable attention. This study seeks to offer insights into what attracts students to IPE and other health care reform initiatives and how advocates of change can stimulate this interest.

BACKGROUND: The need for interprofessional education has been apparent for decades and in 2004, we established the first Interprofessional Training Unit (ITU) in Denmark. Nursing, occupational therapy and physiotherapy students were in the ITU for its first 2 years and in 2006, medical students joined in. The students in collaboration run a ward with eight beds under the supervision of trained personnel.

OBJECTIVE:

Multidisciplinary care has been shown as the most effective option for chronic disease. The aim of the Team-link study was to assess the effectiveness of an intervention to improve teamwork among general practitioners (GPs), practice staff and allied health professionals (AHPs). This paper describes changes to teamwork using qualitative data collected in the study.

DESIGN:

This UK-based empirical research investigates interprofessionalism and personalization to assess their potential to achieve quality care provision for people with long-term conditions. Governmental policies extol the virtues of interprofessionalism and personalization to drive modernization forward, however, change requires the commitment of health and social care professionals. Therefore the complexity of turning policy into practice requires continual review to ensure policy ideals become practice realities rather than speculative rhetoric.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21425919

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21740092

BACKGROUND:

Most services provided by health and social care organisations for older people living at home rely on interprofessional working (IPW). Although there is research investigating what supports and inhibits how professionals work together, less is known about how different service models deliver care to older people and how effectiveness is measured. The aim of this study was to describe how IPW for older people living at home is delivered, enacted and evaluated in England.

METHOD:

INTRODUCTION: Despite an explosion of interest in improving safety and reducing error in health care, one important aspect of patient safety that has received little attention is a systematic approach to education and training for the whole health care workforce. This article describes an evaluation of an innovative multiprofessional, team-based training program that embeds patient safety within quality improvement methods.

INTRODUCTION:

Care for the frail elderly is often provided by several professionals. Collaboration between them is essential, but remains difficult to achieve. Interprofessional education (IPE) can improve this collaboration. We developed a 9-hour IPE program for primary care professionals from 7 disciplines caring for the frail elderly, and aimed to establish whether the program improved professionals' interprofessional attitudes and attitudes toward collaboration, collaboration skills, and collaborative behavior. We also evaluated learners' reactions to the program.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18202992