What is Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice (IPECP)?
“Interprofessional education occurs when students from two or more professions learn about, from, and with each other to enable collaboration and improve health outcomes” (WHO, 2010).
“Collaborative practice in health-care as occurring when multiple health workers from different professional backgrounds provide comprehensive services by working with patients, their families, carers and communities to deliver the highest quality of care across settings” (WHO, 2010)
“What makes something “count” as IPE?” cartoon [NewTab]
Cartoon showing the definition of Interprofessional Education (Michalec & Sampson, 2018, p. 14)
“How can they work together if they don’t learn together?” cartoon [NewTab]
A cartoon showing the reality of siloed care, if different healthcare professionals do not collaborate with one another (CIHC, 2008)
“Health care Deja Vu” cartoon [NewTab]
A cartoon demonstrating repeats in care due to a lack of communication between healthcare providers (CIHC, 2009)
What makes IPE different from other teaching methods?
While other teaching methods may involve multiple health professions in the same course, IPE places emphasis on having different health professions respect, interact, work and learn together (Rodrigues da Silva Noll Gonçalves et al., 2023) by learning WITH, FROM, and ABOUT each other. IPE focuses on establishing collaborative practice in healthcare systems, through having a shared vision to improve care specified to each patient, and valuing each healthcare team member (Ford & Gray, 2021). The involvement of students in interprofessional collaboration brings to their understanding the unique skills of their peers and how they can be integrated and complementary in practice (Rodrigues da Silva Noll Gonçalves et al., 2023).
Professional Education Models – Low to High Integration
From Interprofessional Research (IPR) Global Discussion Paper [NewTab] (Kahlili et al., 2019)
Uniprofessional Education: “A model of higher education wherein learners from each discipline/program learn and socialize in isolation from those in related disciplines/programs which leads learners to develop uniprofessional identity”
Intraprofessional: “A term which describes any activity which is undertaken by individuals within the same profession”
Transprofessional: “An activity designed to promote generic working: a process whereby the activities of one professional group are undertaken by members of another”
Transdisciplinary: “is a term which describes an evolution in the team approach where team members share knowledge, skills, and responsibilities across disciplinary boundaries with a certain amount of boundary blurring between disciplines and implies cross-training and flexibility in accomplishing tasks”
Multidisciplinary: “Refers to activities performed by members from different academic disciplines (psychology, sociology, mathematics) who work independently, in parallel or sequentially on different aspects of a project within their disciplinary boundaries. In healthcare settings, this term has historically been used erroneously in place of interprofessional. In medicine, it can refer to collaborative work among professionals from different specialties (e.g. neurologists, cardiologists, surgeons)”
Interprofessional networking: “A type of work similar to interprofessional collaboration (see above) but involving loosely organised groups of individuals from different health and social care professions who meet and work together on a periodic basis. Shared team identity, clarity of roles/goals, interdependence, integration and shared responsibility are less essential than in coordination”
