What problem was addressed? Medical educators must help future doctors develop a professional identity that supports teamwork, including appropriate development of knowledge-, attitude-and skill-based competencies required to perform optimally on teams. Unfortunately, despite being presented multiple opportunities to work in teams, learners do not always develop team-focused competencies. Importantly, many fail to develop a team-level orientation.
Developing and sustaining a comprehensive interprofessional education (IPE) curriculum infused throughout health science programmes at large post-secondary institutions requires not only champions within each program but also collaboration across professional programmes and strong support at an institutional level. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it reports on the development of an interprofessional learning pathway, an institutional curricular model, and the pathway launch, an introductory learning experience within the context of a large post-secondary institution. The interprofessional curricular model provides a framework to connect the IPE that was previously fragmented across faculties and professional programmes into a scaffolded coherent pathway. The launch exposes students to the principles and competencies of collaborative practice. Second, it explores the dual role of enablers and barriers to IPE within the context of one institution's 20-year experience of developing and delivering. In examining the elements that have sustained the institution's IPE programming, it is highlighted how the seemingly positive elements (e.g., IPE champions and strong university support from central administration) have also served as hindrances within the academy potentially threatening the sustainability and institutionalisation of IPE. We anticipate that this curricular model and learning experiences will provide mechanisms to sustain and foster IPE.
Background: Interprofessional collaboration (IPC) is accepted as standard practice in healthcare. Because of this expectation, there is an increased need for growth in interprofessional education (IPE). Despite this need, the scholarship of IPE is limited. To better understand the challenges of IPE and improve on future endeavours, this article describes an IPE collaboration that was less successful, and the conclusions drawn from team reflection regarding IPE. We report on the challenges and the lessons learned.Methods and Findings: After one year of an IPE pilot project, the research team conducted a reflection exercise involving three iterations: 1) initial group meeting to discuss reflection questions, 2) individual review of meeting notes, 3) subsequent group meeting to confirm accuracy of the data. The confirmed data were then analyzed using thematic analysis.Conclusions: The key themes that emerged regarding the limited success of the pilot were focused on communication—between members of the research team, with the students, and with other faculty impacted by the pilot. Recommendations regarding improvements to facilitate future IPE initiatives are discussed. The summary conclusion of our exercise acknowledged that as IP educators we must remain vigilant to demonstrate IPC in the same manner as we teach it.
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