Resource Center

Interprofessional education for collaborative practice, also referred to as education for “team-based healthcare,” is a recent innovation in US health professions education.¹ Several specialties in medicine support this approach to care, for example, geriatrics, but educational preparation to deliver team-based care remains underdeveloped in the US. Will that change?

Probably, the most frequently asked question about interprofessional education (IPE) is “Does IPE make any difference to health care?” This question was posed in a slightly different way at the All Together Better Health meeting in London, UK, in July 1997. At that conference, two propositions were debated: “interprofessional education promotes collaboration” and “collaboration improves the quality of care” (Leathard, 1997).

Faculty of Medicine/Suez Canal University (FOM/SCU) students are exposed to clinical practice in primary care settings within the community, in which they encounter patients and begin to work within interprofessional health teams. However, there is no planned curricular interaction with learners from other professions at the learning sites.

Interprofessional education for collaborative practice is an important innovation globally and in US health professions education. The recent spotlight on interprofessional education in the United States was launched by a series of reports in the US Institute of Medicine's Quality Chasm series. They raised concerns over medical errors and health care quality as significant sources of morbidity and mortality in the United States and proposed health professions' education for patient-centered, team-based care as one means to address these concerns.

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.