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Registered nurses (RNs) in Ontario have been asked to work collaboratively with family physicians (FPs) and other healthcare professionals in the family practice setting to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare delivery (OFPN 2005). Yet, little is known about the optimal utilization of the RN's role in family practice. This study builds on recent conversations regarding utilization of the nursing workforce (Oelke et al. 2008) and the nursing role (White et al.

OBJECTIVE:

To explore team structures, team relationships, and organizational culture constituting interprofessional collaboration (IPC) in a particular rehabilitation setting; to develop a description of IPC practice that may be translated, adapted, and operationalized in other clinical environments.

DESIGN:

Health-care workers serving homeless persons often face difficulties in addressing the needs of this population due to the complexity of the health challenges and gaps in clinical knowledge. How can health-care workers enhance their ability to care for this population? The authors explore the learning and knowledge-integration strategies of nurses and client care workers employed by organizations targeting homeless persons in a Canadian city.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19678465

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.

Research shows that interprofessional collaboration has become an important factor in the implementation of effective healthcare models. To date, the literature has not focused on the collaboration between medical doctors and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) healthcare practitioners, an example of interdisciplinary collaboration called integrative healthcare (IHC). Drawing on in-depth, semi-standardized interviews conducted with 21 practitioners working in Canadian IHC clinics, this paper explored and interpreted how IHC is experienced by those working in Canadian IHC clinics.

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:

Interprofessional learning is seen as increasingly important for all health and social care workers. How this is integrated into the education of these workers is less clear and more of a challenge. This article describes an online learning activity used to facilitate interprofessional learning in a Faculty of Health and Social Care in the UK. An online conference was used to bring students together, utilising a real life case scenario based around a family within a virtual town. Students from a variety of programmes and professional groups participated in an asynchronous discussion forum.

Research suggests that health care can be improved and patient harm reduced when health professionals successfully collaborate across professional boundaries. Consequently, there is growing support for interprofessional collaboration in health and social care, both nationally and internationally. Factors including professional hierarchies, discipline-specific patterns of socialization, and insufficient time for teambuilding can undermine efforts to improve collaboration.

AIM: This paper is a report of a study to evaluate the influence of interdisciplinary seminars for undergraduate nursing and social work students on development of their understanding of the meaning of caring.