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This paper reports on a longitudinal follow-up evaluation of an interprofessional experiential course to support the development of effective communication and interpersonal relationship skills in palliative care: 'It's good to listen: advanced communication skills in end of life care'. The course was developed from evidence-based guidance produced by the West of Scotland Cancer Network and NHS Education for Scotland in 2009. The aim of the study was to explore the factors that support or hinder the sustainable integration of skills and learning from the course into clinical practice.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18202993

In the absence of an interprofessional competency framework in Canada, the College of Health Disciplines (CHD) at the University of British Columbia developed a universally applicable framework. This article discusses the development of the "BC Competency Framework for Interprofessional Collaboration". Building on a Health Canada funded initiative through the Interprofessional Network of British Columbia (In-BC), the CHD compared and contrasted existing competency frameworks and consulted curriculum and IP experts throughout British Columbia.

The education of health professions students is rooted historically in time-honored and silo-bound traditions of pedagogy and content not easily influenced by outside forces. However, the quality chasm work of the Institute of Medicine, Institute of Healthcare Improvement, Quality and Safety Education for Nurses, and other groups has led to a remarkable willingness to change at one academic health sciences university. This article describes one university's strategies, challenges, and successes in delivering interprofessional educational programs.

The challenge for members of interprofessional teams is to manage the team processes that occur in all teamwork while simultaneously managing their individual professional identities. The aim of this study was to identify and describe difficulties perceived by health professionals in interprofessional teamwork. Utterances on verbal actions and resolutions were also explored to enable a discussion of the implications for interprofessional learning.

Context: Interprofessional collaboration is gaining increasing prominence as a team-based approach to health care delivery that synergistically maximises the strengths of each health professional to enhance patient care, decrease medical errors and optimise efficiency. The often neglected role that student leaders have in preparing their peers, as the health professionals of the future, for collaboration in health care should not be overlooked.

Successful transition of students to competent work-ready health professionals requires an ability to work in health care teams. Poor communication and teamwork practice has been implicated as a contributing source of error affecting patient safety. Traditional university curriculum structures severely limit the time that students from different professions can spend together, learning about and from each other (interprofessional education [IPE]). IPE initiatives need to focus on whole-of-system impacts and organisational sustainability.

Teenagers and young adults with cancer face significant challenges throughout their cancer journey. Psychosocial issues are considered to be among the most challenging faced by patients, families and healthcare professionals. Staff from Coventry University met with a group of international experts in Bangkok in 2006 to discuss the specific educational needs of various members of the healthcare team who care for this group of patients. Key concepts discussed there became a reality when this online, interprofessional course was accredited and commenced in February 2007.

The interprofessional literature suggests that there is a lack of evidence of the effectiveness of interprofessional education (IPE) on patient outcomes and critiques the methodology used to determine the evidence. This paper describes and critiques a comprehensive evaluation of a practice-based IPE intervention. The evaluation was challenged by the complexity of the project such as having multiple sites with great variability in settings and participants which required a multifaceted evaluation approach.