This paper reports on a study commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) to explore common themes of collaborative practice. The WHO requested global clarification of (1) the nature of collaborative practice, (2) its perceived importance, and (3) strategies for systematizing collaborative practice throughout national health systems.

High-fidelity simulation in health professional programs helps educators and students meet the challenges of increasingly complex clinical practice settings. Simulation has been used primarily to train nursing students either in interprofessional teams or within their respective nursing training levels. However, students' experiences of learning alongside others in different levels or years of the nursing program have not been explored.

Recognizing the importance of interprofessional education, we developed a pilot interprofessional education course at our institution that included a total of 10 nursing, BS health psychology, premedical, and pharmacy students. Course goals were for students to: 1) learn about, practice, and enhance their skills as members of an interprofessional team, and 2) create and deliver a community-based service-learning program to help prevent or slow the progression of cardiovascular disease in older adults.

BACKGROUND: High-fidelity simulation is becoming increasingly important in the delivery of teaching and learning to health care professionals within a safe environment. Its use in an interprofessional context and at undergraduate level has the potential to facilitate the learning of good communication and teamworking, in addition to clinical knowledge and skills.

PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH:

This paper reports on the evaluation of the educational benefits to third-year MPharm students attached to four Nottingham inner-city training practices as part of the first cohort of learners to come to a multiprofessional learning organisation (MPLO). The aim was to identify areas of benefit above and beyond those available at their core course in order to identify areas for further study.

METHODOLOGY:

Respect is important in the creation of a positive perioperative work environment and effective OR teams. Low scores for respect in the OR on an employee opinion survey and responses on a more customized survey that examined issues associated with respect prompted leaders at the University Health Network to undertake a multiyear organizational strategy to address respect and quality of worklife initiatives. An interprofessional quality of worklife task force convened to create an action plan to address the outcomes of the surveys.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21182437

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21519420

Thirty-nine volunteer students from 3 health science colleges at Touro University California participated in an exercise designed to promote interprofessional collaboration. In the event, thirteen 3-person multidisciplinary teams of students identified potential medical errors in a series of case-based scenarios. In an immediate postevent survey, 33 of 39 respondents (85%) indicated that the exercise marked the first time that they had worked on clinical problems with students from other health professions. All respondents agreed that interprofessional education was useful and necessary.

In exploring innovative approaches to enhanced patient care, an acute care interprofessional clinical learning unit (IPCLU) was established in a medical unit of a large metropolitan hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Part of a larger, community based, participatory mixed method research project, this acute-care model involved several post-secondary institution health science faculties, students, academics, and other post-secondary institutions partnering with the hospital to coordinate and enhance student clinical learning and improve patient care.