The Effectiveness of Interprofessional Education in the Health Sciences: Implications for Occupational Therapy Education

Abstract

Teamwork in health care settings is assumed to be beneficial for the client since it allows for a more holistic, comprehensive, co-ordinated approach. It is essential, therefore, for team members to have an adequate knowledge of, and respect for one another's professions. Traditionally, the different health care professions know little about each others specific skillset and their roles as health care practitioners, whereas in interprofessional education (IPE), clinicians and/or students become familiar with the knowledge, skills and attitudes of each other to be effective team members. Changes in the current health care environment require well-versed, flexible, collaborative clinicians who work for the client's best interests. Traditional professional silos are no longer viable. IPE both at the undergraduate/preemployment level and postgraduate/post-employment level is seen as one means to foster effective cross-professional communication, collaboration and client-centred care. IPE assists students to increase their knowledge of the roles and functions of other related professionals and enable an integrated approach to both in the workplace and in collaborative practice. Given that IPE is resource intensive, a question that can be posed is "how effective is IPE?" Many evaluation studies examining the effectiveness of IPE in health care contexts (mainly with physicians and nurses) have been completed. Only a few investigations have included other health professions such as occupational therapy, pharmacy, social work or physiotherapy. All of the IPE effectiveness studies report some form of positive benefit or outcome, but none of the studies are definitive or have been replicated. Many of the published health science IPE evaluation studies lack adequate rigor in terms of poor or unclear research design used, small sample size, non-randomisation of participants, lack of comparison control group, lack of acknowledgement of bias, non-standardised instruments used and/or statistical analyses completed. Several systematic reviews have been completed dealing with the published health science IPE evaluation literature, but the results have been largely inconclusive. Ongoing evaluation of the effectiveness of IPE in the health sciences is required.

Interdisciplinary groups perform better than intradisciplinary groups in online group discussion activities

“…Furthermore, our data clearly indicated the power of group discussion for solving tasks when participants' professional fields were mixed. Previous reports have indicated the positive effects of IPE on occupational therapy education and on-site training for medical and nursing students [9][10][11]. It is reasonable to consider that ideas or ways of thinking might be similar when participants are studying in the same professional field.…”

DVD-based stories of people with developmental disabilities as resources for inter-professional education

“…According to Lewis and Stone [19], in IPE professions representing a wide range of health-related disciplines come together to learn with, from and about their own and other professions, with the aim of improving both collaboration and quality of care. Reviews of research into the benefits of IPE have been positive [20,21]. However, Payler et al [22] argued that outcomes appear limited when evaluated using purely quantitative methods, with systematic reviews relying largely on randomised controlled trials failing to capture the complexity of potential outcomes.…”