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In this editorial, the author aims to ‘take stock’ of interprofessional education and interprofessional practice – empirically and theoretically – before sketching out some ideas for the future development of the field.
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Interprofessional education, continuing interprofessional education, interprofessional collaboration, and interprofessional care are moving to the forefront of approaches with the potential to reorganize the delivery of health professions education and health care practice. This article discusses 7 key trends in the scholarship and practice of interprofessional education: conceptual clarity, quality, safety, technology, assessment of learning, faculty development, and theory.

A central obstacle that faces governments and service providers alike is the acute shortage of health professionals — with all projections indicating the situation will certainly worsen as the skilled workforce shortage hits in the coming decades (Health Canada 2006).

Background: The Student Perceptions of Physician-Pharmacist Interprofessional Clinical Education (SPICE) instrument contains 10 items, 3 factors (interprofessional teamwork and team-based practice, roles/responsibilities for collaborative practice, and patient outcomes from collaborative practice), and utilizes a five-point response scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree).

Little is known about the nature of interprofessional collaboration on intensive care units (ICUs), despite its recognition as a key component of patient safety and quality improvement initiatives. This comparative ethnographic study addresses this gap in knowledge and explores the different factors that influence collaborative work in the ICU. It aims to develop an empirically grounded team diagnostic tool, and associated interventions to strengthen team-based care and patient family involvement.

BACKGROUND: Poor interprofessional communication in hospital is deemed to cause significant patient harm. Although recognition of this issue is growing, protocols are being implemented to solve this problem without empirical research on the interprofessional communication interactions that directly underpin patient care.

Although effective interprofessional collaboration is a key component of patient safety and quality improvement initiatives, little is known about the nature of collaboration in ICU settings. Through ethnographic research, this study will explore interprofessional care in 8 ICUs (6 based in the United States and 2 based in Canada), develop an empirically based readiness/diagnostic tool to assess the quality of team-based care delivery, and develop interventions to strengthen team-based care and patient family involvement.

This article explores and discusses current conceptual and empirical dimensions of the study of space, place, education and interprofessional education (IPE) within a health professions context. This article addresses defining elements of the concepts, their use in nursing and medical literature and their positioning within educational theories. It outlines a series of ideas and approaches for future research aimed at investigating the intersections and relationships amongst these concepts.

At the heart of safe cultures are effective interactions within and between interprofessional teams. Critical care clinicians see severely ill patients who require coordinated interprofessional care. In this scoping review, we asked: "What do we know about processes, relationships, organizational and contextual factors that shape the ability of clinicians to deliver interprofessional care in adult ICUs?" Using the 5-stage process established by Levac et al.

The role of the facilitator is known to be important in fostering productive interprofessional education (IPE) in the face-to-face (F2F) environment. Online learning can help surmount some of the logistical challenges in IPE by bringing together diverse professionals in multiple geographical locations. Best practices in F2F IPE facilitation are beginning to emerge, but there is scant literature examining IPE facilitation online.