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OBJECTIVE: A substantial literature engaging with the directions and experiences of stakeholders involved in interprofessional health education exists at the international level, yet almost nothing has been published that documents and analyses the Australian experience. Accordingly, this study aimed to scope the experiences of key stakeholders in health and higher education in relation to the development of interprofessional practice capabilities in health graduates in Australia.

CONTEXT: Interprofessional education (IPE) is not a recent phenomenon and has been the subject of several World Health Organization reports. Its focus is on health professionals and students learning with, from and about one another to improve collaboration and the quality of patient care. The drivers for IPE include new models of health care delivery in the context of an ageing population and the increasing prevalence of long-term chronic disease, in addition to the patient safety agenda.

The core values of both interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) and relational coordination (RC) include the provision of the best possible care through optimal communication between all participants involved in that care including professionals and support staff as well as patients and their families. Both approaches stress the need to build shared goals, shared knowledge and mutual respect across professional boundaries.

This paper focuses on a context where interdisciplinarity intersects with interprofessionality: the work of children's services professionals who address the needs of children identified as vulnerable. It draws on evidence and perspectives from two disciplines – educational studies and health care – to consider the issues and challenges posed by learning and/or working across disciplinary boundaries and why these have proved so obdurate.

This paper uses (and perhaps abuses) deconstruction to revisit the meanings of collaboration and practice. We start with a description of deconstruction itself, as espoused by Jacques Derrida, and then move onto challenging the notion that words, such as collaboration, can have fixed meanings.

Practice-based learning (PrBL) occurs in all health professional training but there are intra- and interprofessional differences depending on context, location and professional identity. In this position paper I will explore the definition, context and elements of PrBL across the health professions, and their implications for interprofessional education (IPE).

Compassion is a health professional value that has received a lot of attention recently. In this paper we consider the nature of compassion, its definition and its expression in practice. We further link compassion to patient-centred care. There is debate about whether compassion can be learned, and therefore assessed. There are similar discussions in relation to ‘professionalism’ and the effects of the hidden curriculum.

Health professionals need preparation and support to work in collaborative practice teams, a requirement brought about by an aging population and increases in chronic and complex diseases. Therefore, health professions education has seen the introduction of interprofessional education (IPE) competency frameworks to provide a common lens through which disciplines can understand, describe, and implement team-based practices.

This review seeks to situate the contemporary Australian field of IPL/IPE within its history, nationally and internationally, in order to illuminate how it has taken the form and shape that it has, how it relates to international agendas in health and health professional education and shifts in the higher education sector, and to resource a research and development agenda for system-wide change. The review addresses the following questions:

When you're admitted to a hospital, the hope is that you will get better. But according to the Journal of Patient Safety, as many as 440,000 people every year die because of medical errors. That would make medical error the third leading cause of death in the U.S., after heart disease and cancer. These statisitics, combined with incentives under the Affordable Care Act to improve quality, are prompting medical schools to teach students to work in teams.