"Seamless Care" was one of 21 grants awarded by Health Canada to inform policymakers of the effectiveness of interprofessional education in promoting collaborative patient-centred practice among health professionals. The "Seamless Care" model of interprofessional education was designed with input from three Faculties at Dalhousie University (Medicine, Dentistry and Health Professions). The design was grounded in relevant learning theories--Social Cognitive Theory, Self-efficacy, Situated Learning theory and Constructivism.

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.

In order to elicit the attitudes of final year medical and 3rd year undergraduate nursing students, towards interprofessional education (IPE), a survey using a 25-item questionnaire and a five-point Likert scale design was administered to a convenience sample of 60 students. In addition, two focus group discussions were carried out, one in each student group, using a topic guide. The findings suggest that the majority of the students were aware about the concept and importance of IPE.

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

Technology has become a ubiquitous part of our society and is largely embedded in today's educational system. 3D virtual reality technology can be used to simulate environments and activities and may be used as an instructional technology. The purpose of this research was to better understand the utility of a web-based virtual environment as a teaching tool to represent clinical assessment and interventions in the home environment.

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: