Although health professional educational programs have been successful in equipping graduates with skills, knowledge and professionalism, the emphasis on specialization and profession-specific education has enhanced the development of a uniprofessional identity, which has been found to be a major barrier to interprofessional collaborative person-centred practice (IPCPCP). Changes within healthcare professional education programs are necessary to enable a shift in direction toward interprofessional socialization (IPS) to promote IPCPCP. Currently, there is a paucity of conceptual frameworks to guide IPS. In this article, we present a framework designed to help illuminate an IPS process, which may inform efforts by educators and curriculum developers to facilitate the development of health professions students' dual identity, that is, an interprofessional identity in addition to their existing professional identity, as a first step toward IPCPCP. This framework integrates concepts derived from social identity theory and intergroup contact theory into a dual identity model of IPS.
The psychometric analysis of this instrument supports its value in measuring collaboration within teams and when patients are included as team members. The AITCS can be applied to continuing professional education interventions to determine change over time. It has limitations to the Canadian context and within the settings where participants practiced. Further test and retest reliability and longitudinal study application is needed.
The full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education and interprofessional education programs in particular is yet to be determined, however, it is clear that this pandemic is changing the way we live, learn, and work. Online education is becoming the new normal in academia, but it is a development that may be posing a conundrum to some. Teachers of interprofessional education are expected to employ online education, but some may lack the knowledge and expertise to create and facilitate an engaging, positive, and supportive online environment for their students. This report discusses the application of Meaningful Discourse and the Community of Inquiry principles on developing online learning communities in interprofessional education.
The ISVS-21 is a refined measure to assess existing levels of IP socialization in practitioners and students, and relate IP socialization to other important constructs such as IP collaboration and the development of an IP identity. The equivalent versions can be used to assess change in IP socialization as a result of interprofessional education.
Health care systems around the world are under tremendous pressure to change their models of health care delivery - from the current multiprofessional health care delivery into interprofessional collaborative care models with the ultimate goal of improving patient/client outcomes. The growing diversity of the population, the increasing number of vulnerable persons (elderly, homeless, those living with chronic health conditions), the complexity of health problems, and the shortage of health care providers have forced health policymakers to call for sweeping revisions to how health care is provided, impacting how health care program students are educated. However, in professional training emphasis is placed on uniprofessional education. Learners are socialized in isolation from those in other related professions to ensure the development of a shared professional identity. Consequently, by program completion each student will not only master the knowledge, skills and norms of his/her own profession, but will also develop a silo identity, called "uniprofessional identity". This isolationist identity creates a lack of understanding of others. In limiting their exposure to learning about the roles and value of other health care professionals, persistent negative stereotypical attitudes towards other professionals are reinforced. In this paper, we present the historical evolution(s) of the discourse of professionalism to assist us to develop a deeper understanding of socio-historical context within which interprofessional education (IPE) is embedded within, and collaborative person-centered practice (CPCP). With greater insight, we can (re)conceptualize the possibilities, and advance research on, interprofessional education and practice in the present.
Globally, the advent and rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus has created significant disruption to health professions education and practice, and consequently interprofessional education, leading to a model of learning and practicing where much is unknown. Key questions for this ongoing evolution emerge for the global context leading to reflections on future directions for the interprofessional education field and its role in shaping future practice models. Health professions programs around the world have made a dramatic shift to virtual learning platforms in response to closures of academic institutions and restrictions imposed on learners accessing practice settings. Telemedicine, slow to become established in many countries to date, has also revolutionized practice in the current environment. Within the state of disruption and rapid change is the awareness of a silver lining that provides an opportunity for future growth. Key topics explored in this commentary include reflection on the application of existing competency frameworks, consideration of typology of team structures, reconsideration of theoretical underpinnings, revisiting of core dimensions of education, adaptation of interprofessional education activities, and the role in the future pandemic planning. As an international community of educators and researchers, the authors consider current observations relevant to interprofessional education and practice contexts and suggest a response from scholarship voices across the globe. The current pandemic offers a unique opportunity for educators, practitioners, and researchers to retain what has served interprofessional education and practice well in the past, break from what has not worked as well, and begin to imagine the new.
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