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The Collaboration for Maternal and Newborn Health, a multidisciplinary group of maternity care providers from the University of British Columbia (UBC), received funding from Health Canada to develop interprofessional education programs for health care students. Medical, midwifery, and nursing students from UBC were invited to participate in the three programs described in this article. The Interprofessional Student Doula Support Program, a year-long program for 15 students, combines classroom learning about marginalized women with on-call doula support to attend births.

CONTEXT:

Poor interprofessional relationships in maternity units have resulted in a number of suboptimal outcomes: students are reluctant to pursue careers in obstetrics and gynaecology (O & G); trainees feel bullied, and poor communication between professionals results in avoidable adverse events. Interprofessional learning has been advocated to improve interprofessional relationships, but recent interventions have not been successful at undergraduate level. This study aimed to address this issue locally and then to disseminate our lessons, successes and challenges.

A recent national assessment of emergency planning in Canada suggests that health care professionals are not properly prepared for disasters. In response to this gap, an interprofessional course in disaster management was developed, implemented and evaluated in Toronto, Canada from 2007 to 2008. Undergraduate students from five educational institutions in nursing, medicine, paramedicine, police, media and health administration programs took an eight-week online course.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19842960

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19842961

This article describes the evolution of a multiprofessional group in a psychiatric nursing home for older people with mental illness and challenging behaviours. The nursing home has gained a reputation for excellence, and we believe the group has contributed to this. To analyse how the group has helped, a staff survey was carried out. As a result, we suggest that groups like this should be a standard part of community liaison services for residential homes for older people.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19412860

This paper explores some core features of interprofessional learning (IPL) and provides an example from the Swedish context. At Linköping university IPL was made an integral part of the problem based learning (PBL) programs that were implemented in 1986 at the Faculty of health sciences. A description of how the IPL strand is designed and some conclusions from evaluation studies are as well provided.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20369439

BACKGROUND: Many measurement scales for interprofessional collaboration are developed for one health professional group, typically nurses. Evaluating interprofessional collaborative relationships can benefit from employing a measurement scale suitable for multiple health provider groups, including physicians and other health professionals. To this end, the paper begins development of a new interprofessional collaboration measurement scale designed for use with nurses, physicians, and other professionals practicing in contemporary acute care settings.

INTRODUCTION:

Interprofessional education (IPE) is interactive and constructivist in nature and requires specific facilitation skills to engage participants in a unique body of content, interpersonal interaction, and learning from each other. This article describes the development and testing of a scale, the Interprofessional Facilitation Scale (IPFS), to assess educators' skills in facilitating IPE.

METHODS: