BACKGROUND AND METHODS:

Medical students, nursing students, and other health care professionals in training were integrated with health care workers on interprofessional quality improvement (QI) teams at our academic health center. Teams received training in QI, accompanied by expert QI mentoring, with dual goals of increasing expertise in improvement while improving care.

RESULTS:

A review of the formal ethics consultations performed at a rural academic medical center during 2006 revealed that only 5 of 72 consultations were initiated by nurses. A descriptive exploratory convenience study used a 3-item survey to collect information from registered nurses who provide direct patient care at the rural academic medical center.

Future health professionals are often educated with other students of their same discipline when, in practice, they will be working with professionals from other backgrounds to provide care for the patient. Complex issues of ethical concern are common to health professionals due to modern technology. This paper describes the evolution of an interprofessional bioethics course that had a unique combination of students and faculty. Innovative teaching methods were utilized and continuously refined based on student evaluations.

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/20148622

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

Interprofessional education has been defined as "members or students of two or more professionals associated with health or social care, engaged in learning with, from and about each other". Ideally, students trained using interprofessional education paradigms become interprofessional team members who gain respect and improve their attitudes about each other, and ultimately improve patient outcomes. However, it has been stated that before interprofessional education can claim its importance and successes, its impact must be critically evaluated.