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This paper revisits the formative evaluation of a pilot project that offered in-service interprofessional education (IPE), which is designed to enhance the collaborative practice, to two UK community mental health teams (CMHTs). While the IPE was well received and resulted in some improvements in team functioning, wider successes were elusive. Specifically, collaborative action plans were not implemented, and the pilot programme was ultimately not rolled out to other CMHTs.

Knowledge-translation interventions and interprofessional education and collaboration interventions all aim at improving health care processes and outcomes. Knowledge-translation interventions attempt to increase evidence-based practice by a single professional group and thus may fail to take into account barriers from difficulties in interprofessional relations. Interprofessional education and collaboration interventions aim to improve interprofessional relations, which may in turn facilitate the work of knowledge translation and thus evidence-based practice.

As a component of its next accreditation system, the ACGME has established the CLER program to assess the graduate medical education (GME) learning environment of each sponsoring institution and its participating sites. CLER emphasizes the responsibility of the sponsoring institution for the quality and safety of the environment for learning and patient care, a key dimension of the 2011 ACGME Common Program Requirements.

Since the release of the Institute of Medicine's report on resident hours and patient safety, there have been calls for enhanced institutional oversight of duty hour limits and of efforts to enhance the quality and safety of care in teaching hospitals.

This paper is the first of two that highlights key elements needed for consideration in the planning and implementation of interprofessional educational (IPE) interventions at both the pre and post-licensure qualification education levels. There is still much to be learned about the pedagogical constructs related to IPE. Part 1 of this series discusses the learning context for IPE and considers questions related to the "who, what, where, when and how" related to IPE.

In the second paper of this two part series on Key Elements of Interprofessional Education (IPE), we highlight factors for success in IPE based on a systematic literature review conducted for Health Canada in its "Interprofessional Education for Patient Centred Practice" (IECPCP) initiative in Canada (Oandasan et al., 2004). The paper initially discusses micro (individual level) meso (institutional/organizational level) and macro (socio-cultural and political level) factors that can influence the success of an IPE initiative.

In this paper we scanned and summarized the empirical research evidence and found that the effects of pre-licensure interprofessional education on patient/client care are unknown. In contrast, for post-licensure collaboration interventions, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting positive effects on the delivery of care. The coverage of this latter evidence, however, is patchy, being especially weak in primary care.

The need for effective collaboration when working with survivors of domestic violence is an urgent one. This paper outlines an innovative project that will examine the antecedents of homicide by a current or former partner. The early stages of the project including analysis of closed homicide case records and a survey of police officers' experience of collaboration with health and social care providers is presented. Early findings suggest opportunities where intervention could in future situations prevent homicide.

OBJECTIVES: Interprofessional collaboration is widely advocated in health and social care policies. However, existing research provides a relatively poor understanding of how professionals collaborate or the meanings they attach to their collaborative work. This paper aims to contribute to understanding of this activity by providing an in-depth account of interprofessional collaboration on medical wards in a large teaching hospital.

Interprofessional education has long been cited in health and social care policy as a remedy to improve many of the problems faced by the National Health Service (NHS) around co-ordination and collaboration of staff. More recently, this form of education has been acknowledged as having a key role in delivering the government's modernisation agenda to produce a more 'flexible' workforce. Given the large number of logistical problems connected to developing interprofessional education before registration, this type of activity more often occurs after registration.