Results

Principles

IPE is an approach to teaching and learning that brings together students from two or more professions to learn about, from and with each other in service of enabling effective collaboration. Its goal is to improve health care outcomes through the education of a collaborative practice ready workforce that is prepared to respond to local and global health needs (World Health Organization 2010).


Educational Terms

Interprofessional Education: occurs when members (or students) of two or more health and/or social care professions engage in learning with, from and about each other to improve collaboration and the delivery of care.

Multiprofessional Education: occurs when members (or students) of two or more professions learn alongside one another; in other words, parallel rather than interactive learning.

Uniprofessional Education: occurs when education is undertaken by individuals within the same profession.

Professional Education: is the sum total of uniprofessional, multiprofessional and interprofessional education.

Interdisciplinary Education: occurs when learners from different disciplines (e.g. chemistry, social science) engage in collaborative interactive learning for a range of purposes (e.g. to understand complex interdisciplinary issues, to explore different disciplinary roles and contributions).

Multidisciplinary Education: occurs when learners from two or more disciplines learn alongside one another; in other words, parallel rather than interactive learning.

Unidisciplinary Education: occurs when education is undertaken by individuals within the same discipline.

Disciplinary Education: it is the sum total of unidisciplinary, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary education.

Assessment: is focused on understanding the learning that occurs by individuals or groups (e.g. examining how learners’ knowledge and skills of collaboration have improved).

Evaluation: is focused on understanding the effects of a program (e.g. studying the impact of an IPE course on diabetes care and delivery of services to patients).

Pre-briefing: IPE introductory lecture regarding core competencies, in addition to an orientation on the simulation functions that is given to the students before applying their management.

Debriefing: students reflect their performance before the facilitators give them feedback about their achievements during the session. Each simulation station is managed by an expert technician who manages the process of the case scenario and facilitators are responsible to assess students using management checklist, TOSCE (Team Objective Structured Clinical Exam) and give them feedback about their performance as a whole.

Practice Terms

Collaboration: is an active and ongoing partnership, often between people from diverse backgrounds, who work together to solve problems or provide services.

Interdisciplinary Teamwork: relates to the collaborative efforts undertaken by individuals from different disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, economics, geography, political science and computer science.

Interprofessional Collaboration: is a type of interprofessional work that involves different health and social care professions who regularly come together to solve problems or provide services.

Interprofessional Coordination: is a type of work that is similar to interprofessional collaboration, as it involves different health and social care professions. It differs as it is a ‘looser’ form of working arrangement whereby interprofessional communication and discussion may be less frequent in nature.

Interprofessional Networking: describes an activity that involves a loosely organized group of individuals from different health and social care professions who meet and work together on a periodic basis.

Interprofessional Teamwork: is a type of work which involves different health and/or social professions who share a team identity and work closely together in an integrated and interdependent manner to solve problems and deliver services.

Facilitators: a facilitator is a process guide who focuses discussions and clarifies understanding, while encouraging shared decision making and problem solving. A facilitator assists the group in creating and achieving common goals and expectations. Facilitators are not a content/topic expert.

Outcomes

  • Aim to foster the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours that facilitate effective interprofessional (IP) collaborative practice among health care providers.

  • Students will explore ways in which their professions can work together in order to optimize the patient‘s care respecting each other‘s roles and responsibilities.

  • Provide students with the fundamental IP competencies, which are necessary for a coordinated and safe IP collaboration that decreases medical errors, and improves patient‘s safety, and outcomes regardless of their practice environment and professional discipline.

  • Employ a variety of interactive learning methods and technologies including simulation.

Competencies

Role Clarification: Students should be able to understand their own role and the roles of those in other professions, and use this knowledge appropriately to establish and achieve patient/client/family and community goals.

Patient/Client/Family/Community-Centered Care: Students should be able to seek out, integrate and value, as a partner, the input and the engagement of the patient/client/ family/community in designing and implementing care/ services.

Team Functioning: Students should be able to understand the principles of team work dynamics and group/team processes to enable effective interprofessional collaboration.

Collaborative Leadership: Students should be able to understand and apply leadership principles that support a collaborative practice model. This domain supports shared decision-making as well as leadership but it also implies continued individual accountability for one‘s own actions, responsibilities and roles as explicitly defined within one‘s professional/disciplinary scope of practice.

Interprofessional Communication: Students from different professions should be able to communicate with each other in a collaborative, responsive and responsible manner.

Interprofessional Conflict Management: Students should be able to actively engage self and others, including the client/patient /family positively and constructively addressing disagreements as they arise.