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Informal continuing interprofessional education (CIPE) can be traced back decades in the United States; however, interest in formal CIPE is recent. Interprofessional education (IPE) now is recognized as an important component of new approaches to continuing education (CE) that are needed to increase health professionals' ability to improve outcomes of care. Although there are examples of CIPE programs that are being successfully implemented, a clearly articulated, step-by-step planning process to help guide educators in providing effective CIPE programs is lacking.

Growing evidence supports the position that interprofessional education (IPE) and collaborative care are essential elements of healthcare education and practice (Institute of Medicine, 2003; World Health Organization, 2010).

CONTEXT: Despite rapid proliferation of hospital-based palliative care consultation services (PCCSs) across the country, there is little description of the dynamic processes that the PCCS and the non-PCCS hospital cultures experience during the institutionalization of a successful PCCS.

OBJECTIVES: To describe the institutionalization of a new PCCS in a quaternary care academic medical center (AMC) and highlight two themes, cost and quality, that pervaded the dynamics involved from the inception to the successful integration of the service.

BACKGROUND: To support the process of effective family decision making, it is important to recognize and understand informal roles that various family members may play in the end-of-life decision-making process.

OBJECTIVE: To describe some informal roles consistently enacted by family members involved in the process of end-of-life decision making in intensive care units.

In this commentary on a previous Ethics and Social Welfare publication, the authors argue that inclusive and expansive dialogue about interprofessional ethics is more a matter of ‘‘revitalizing’’ traditional professional ethics than developing a new field. The dialogue will be most productive of care improvements if it incorporates the service user, includes both health and social care professions, and occurs across countries.

Through purposeful learning guided by the interprofessional collaborative practice competencies, health professionals will acquire needed knowledge and skills to work together in environments built on mutual respect and shared values, knowledge of each other's roles and responsibilities, and effective communication and teamwork processes. The establishment of these competencies for health professionals provides a transformative direction for improving the health care system.

This article describes the emergence of the American Interprofessional Health Collaborative to rebuild capacity for interprofessional education and care in the U.S. through an inclusive, evidence-based and open exchange of information and resources. Also described are the historical context and the national and international climate for its emergence.

After presenting a theory of team development, we propose that the informal role structure of a team is dependent upon the degree of anomie in the team culture, and we provide measures of anomie and informal roles that can be used in field settings. Then we test hypotheses on a national sample of 111 interdisciplinary health care teams in geriatrics in US Veterans Affairs medical centers. We find evidence that as teams develop from early to later stages, the interpersonal behavior of members becomes less differentiated on three dimensions: prominence, sociability, and task-orientation.

At the present time when interprofessional collaboration in practice is reaching new levels of interest related to health care system changes in both the UK and the US, a key question being raised is: What are the outcomes and costs of interprofessional collaborative models of care?

The current research knowledge base for end-of-life decision making in adult intensive care units is reviewed. Proposals for future research needs and for practice are described.

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