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Interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional collaboration (IPC) have been identified in health education and health care as playing an important role in improving health care services and patient outcomes. Despite a growth in the amount of research in these areas, poor conceptualizations of these interprofessional activities have persisted. Given the conceptual challenges, a scoping review of the interprofessional field was undertaken to map the literature available in order to identify key concepts, theories and sources of evidence.

Educational institutions have largely failed to provide innovative responses to emerging health human resources (HHR) needs. Reasons include the prevailing ratio policy, which simply increases the supply of professionals; university funding protocols; a guild structure that isolates health professions rather than integrating them; and current credentialing for entry to practice, which both controls and further balkanizes the professions.

The College of Health Disciplines, at the University of British Columbia (UBC) has a long history of developing interprofessional learning opportunities for students and practitioners. Historically, many of the courses and programmes were developed because they intuitively made sense or because certain streams of funding were available at particular times. While each of them fit generally within our understanding of interprofessional education in the health and human service education programs, they were not systematically developed within an educational or theoretical framework.

Interprofessional education (IPE) is called for in United States health professions education (Institute of Medicine, 2003). The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) includes interprofessional health education and practice as a strategic area in which the organization and members should engage (AAMC, 2007). The current status of IPE within United States medical schools has remained largely unexamined.

The greatest resource for improving interprofessional learning and practice is the knowledge, wisdom, and energy of professionals who adapt to challenging situations in their everyday work. We call collective capability the ability of a group of professionals to balance two interdependent levels of organization of practice: what professionals know and what they do collectively over time. Organizing what professionals know links the relational value--caring for patients--to the knowledge value of practice.

The healthcare system continues to evolve, requiring innovation to promote patient-centred, fiscally responsible healthcare delivery. This evolution includes changes to the skills and competencies required of the health human resources (HHR), both regulated and unregulated, who are central supports to healthcare delivery. This has become a priority agenda item at the international, national, provincial, regional and local levels.

Context: Interprofessional collaboration is gaining increasing prominence as a team-based approach to health care delivery that synergistically maximises the strengths of each health professional to enhance patient care, decrease medical errors and optimise efficiency. The often neglected role that student leaders have in preparing their peers, as the health professionals of the future, for collaboration in health care should not be overlooked.

This paper explores the culture underlying the practices of physicians and other health care providers in the 20th century and implications for interprofessional education for collaborative practice in the 21st century. Today's practice of medicine flows from the 1920s work of Dr. Abraham Flexner recommending that North American medical schools introduce rigor and consistency in teaching, moving them from private, for-profit, somewhat ad hoc institutions to university affiliation employing physicians dedicated to teaching and research.

For more than 35 years, interprofessional collaboration across the health and human service professions has been promoted as an important means to advance patient- or client-centered practice. Evidence demonstrates that collaborative care in certain circumstances can be more effective and efficient than other models. Over the past decade, in response to national calls to action, American and Canadian health and human service professionals and educators have renewed their focus on interprofessional education (IPE).

Much that has been written about interprofessional education (IPE) and the interprofessional team has concentrated on two or at most three professions, primarily medicine, nursing and pharmacy. Educational programs described in the literature tend to focus on activities involving students, practitioners or both.Very little has been written about the structural changes that need to be made within universities, colleges and the healthcare industry such that IPE becomes a joint responsibility across a number of jurisdictions that may then effectively influence institutional practice.