The importance of amalgamating interprofessional education to the higher education curriculum in Turkey

Abstract

Interprofessional education (IPE) involves members of two or more health and social work professions engaged in learning with, from and about each other to improve collaboration and quality of care. In the 1960s, IPE has started to be taught in the United Kingdom (England, Scotlang, Wales and Northern Ireland). Over the world the majority of the prestigous universities had incorporated IPE into their health and social work curriculums and they have begun to teach IPE as compulsory course at graduate and postgraduate levels. It is predicted that if IPE programmes started in Turkey, health and social work students will learn side by side and will be able to use their abilities more effectively and work collaboratively by raising their awareness and capabilities. The possibility of joining the well established European Interprofessional Education Network and modernising Turkish universities further is closely linked with the implementation of IPE curriculum which consists of collaborative principles in social and health care. Intrinsically, IPE enables health and social care students to obtain problem solving skills. The aim of this study is to emphasize the importance of incorporating IPE into Turkish universities' curriculum by reviewing and explaining the principles of IPE.

Coexisting of interprofessional education and organizational culture

“…Most of the competencies for IPE are related to teamwork. Characteristics of teamwork are [1,3]; -Communication is the key skill in IPE. Communication skills are required to increase teamwork, to understand team members, to define the task well in the team, to transfer the task to other team members, to evaluate team performance and to develop a solution and/or suggestions.…”

“…IPE along with working on reflection aims to have patient-centered solutions: improvements in patient care quality and quality of life, reductions in hospital stay, treatment and maintenance costs, and medical errors. Thus, IPE ensures that health services and social services work together in a way that community benefits [2][3][4].…”

“…The medical education literature reports that it is possible to provide safe and quality patient care and to gain the necessary knowledge, skill and attitude to work as a team by IPE [1,3,4].…”

Meslek Yüksek Okulu Öğrencileri Mesleklerarası Eğitime Hazır mı?

“…Health and social services workers who work together actually are shaped by differing values, points of view, and experiences. Cooperation between health professionals are employees from different occupations working with patients, caregivers, and the society to provide high-quality health care [5][6][7]. Interprofessional education (IPE) is thought to constitute a solution to the differences and prejudices concerning the quality of the work done by health professionals [1,8].…”