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Patient discharge is a key concern in hospitals, particularly in acute care, given the multifaceted and challenging nature of patients’ healthcare needs. Policies on discharge have identified the importance of interprofessional collaboration, yet research has described its limitations in this clinical context. This study aimed to extend our understanding of interprofessional interactions related to discharge in a general internal medicine setting by using sociological theories to illuminate the existence of, and interplay between, structural factors and microlevel practices.

Advocacy is acting for others. Health professions have a long history of acting for others and an equally long history of ethical debate and discernment about such action and its scope and limits. This entry will outline historical trends in how health professionals have understood the balance of their responsibilities between the individual patient and the broader community. There is also discussion of definitions and conceptions of advocacy and how advocacy has been incorporated into various ethical codes and charters of the different health professions.

Objective

This study explored, and compared, the attitudes of student groups trained at the University of Portsmouth Dental Academy (UPDA) in 2010/2011 towards dental interprofessional education (IPE).

Methods

An interprofessional practice gap was identified in relation to discharge care provided to patients with tracheostomies or laryngectomies. Using a case study method, this article presents an approach that administrators of educational programs can take to develop an instructive strategy to address the practice gap and improve patient care.

Background:

The majority of the estimated 400,000 or more patient deaths per year in the United States are from preventable medical errors due to poor communication. Team training programs have been established to teach teamwork skills to health professions students. However, it is often challenging to provide this training at a physical site. A brief intervention using a virtual learning environment with TeamSTEPPS®-based scenarios is described.

Method:

Objective

Receptiveness to interprofessional feedback, which is important for optimal collaboration, may be influenced by ‘in-group or out-group’ categorisation, as suggested by social identity theory. We used an experimental design to explore how nurses and resident physicians perceive feedback from people within and outside their own professional group.

Methods

Interdisciplinary courses among students in occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech-language pathology are important for addressing teamwork, communication, and understanding of professional roles, especially in pre-service training for early intervention and school-based practice where collaboration is essential. Although interprofessional education (IPE) as a part of higher education in the health sciences has been strongly encouraged, IPE courses are difficult to schedule and implement.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES:

Our purpose was to assess student, preceptor, and patient satisfaction with a phased pilot project to introduce interprofessional education teams into a clinical setting.

METHODS:

Introduction

The Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) expert panel advocates for health profession students to learn to work together. 1 This study examined the impact of a single interprofessional experience on three cohorts of health profession students’ readiness, knowledge, and perceptions of working as a team.

Method

Background

Team effectiveness is often explained on the basis of input-process-output (IPO) models. According to these models a relationship between organizational culture (input = I), interprofessional teamwork (process = P) and job satisfaction (output = O) is postulated. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between these three aspects using structural analysis.

Methods