Resource Center

INTRODUCTION: The Rural Interprofessional Programme Emergency Retreat (RIPPER) is an educational programme collaboratively developed and evaluated by an interprofessional team from Schools within Faculty of Health Science (FHS), University of Tasmania (UTAS), Australia.

The purpose of this study is to examine referrals of nurse practitioners providing primary healthcare (PHC NPs) to better understand how PHC NPs collaborate with other healthcare professionals and contribute to interprofessional care. The analysis is based on the data from a survey of 378 PHC NPs registered in Ontario, Canada in 2008. Overall, 69% of PHC NPs made referrals to family physicians (FPs) and 67% of PHC NPs received referrals from FPs. Almost 50% of PHC NPs had bidirectional referrals between them and FPs. Eighty-nine percent of PHC NPs made referrals to specialist physicians.

Practice development (PD), as a framework for multiprofessional working, has immense potential, specifically within change management and the clinical governance agenda. It has been acknowledged as a vehicle for 'continuous improvement'. This article discusses PD through collaborative working using the example of a case study on change of practice in falls reduction within a localised community setting. The process is underpinned by a PD framework and facilitated by leaders of PD within a university setting.

SETTING: An orthopaedic interprofessional training ward manned by students at a University Hospital.

OBJECTIVE: To assess to what extent students from different undergraduate programmes evaluated the effects of a 2-week rotation at the ward on their professional roles and the value of teamwork within health care.

BACKGROUND: Although care pathways are often said to promote teamwork, high-level evidence that supports this statement is lacking. Furthermore, knowledge on conditions and facilitators for successful pathway implementation is scarce. The objective of the European Quality of Care Pathway (EQCP) study is therefore to study the impact of care pathways on interprofessional teamwork and to build up understanding on the implementation process.

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.

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether a peer-to-peer education program was an expedient and effective approach to improve knowledge and promote interprofessional communication and collaboration.

DESIGN: Trained pharmacy students taught nursing students, medical students, and medical residents about the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit (Part D), in 1- to 2-hour lectures.

Nationally and internationally, the terms “interprofessional learning” (IPL) and “collaborative working” are prominent in health care politics (General Medical Council, 2002; World Health Organization, 1988).

BACKGROUND: Existing validated measures of pharmacist-physician collaboration focus on measuring attitudes toward collaboration and do not measure frequency of collaborative interactions.

OBJECTIVE: To develop and validate an instrument to measure the frequency of collaboration between pharmacists and general practitioners (GPs) from the pharmacist's perspective.

The purpose of this study was to compare which learning outcomes relating to an Interprofessional Training Unit (ITU) experience were found to be most important by students and by alumni. A cohort of 428 students in the ITU was asked to write three short statements describing the most important learning outcomes from the ITU. Alumni from the same cohort were after graduation asked the same question. Furthermore, they were asked to fill out a 12-item questionnaire. The statements concerning learning outcome were analysed qualitatively and categorized.