A few days ago I attended a lunchtime seminar on the value and impact of Interprofessional in health sciences education, presented by Professor Hugh Barr. I unfortunately couldn’t stay for the duration of the discussion, but I took a few notes while I was there.
“Interprofessional education (IPE) is sophisticated”. I like this because it seems that we sometimes take the stance that IPE is about putting students from different disciplines in the same room and telling them to learn about each other. It became clear during the discussion just how complex IPE is.
What opportunities exist for curriculum development in the context of IPE? What are the conversations that are happening in the classrooms around interprofessional collaboration? How can those experiences be leveraged by students and educators?
We place groups of 3rd year students in a rural community about an hour outside of Cape Town, and part of that clinical rotation is to try and collaborate with students from other domains. The effort is overseen (in theory) by the Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning Unit, although in practice there are many challenges. The biggest problem, at least as reported by students, is a lack of shared objectives between the groups. Even though they have time allocated during the week in which to work together on shared projects, the individual programmes from the various departments have little in the way of real overlap. This often leads to frustration and a high attrition rate of departments dropping out of the collaborative part of the exercise.
In terms of showcasing examples of collaborative work, which ones aren’t too expensive or challenging, which have good outcomes and can serve to promote the approach i.e. what is the low-hanging fruit?
“small is beautiful”
One of the benefits of IPE is the idea that complex social and health problems in communities are beyond the capacity of any one profession to solve.
Formal publication in peer-reviewed journals isn’t the only set of outcomes to aim for. Interesting and relevant information that isn’t grounded in evidence and theory should also be shared. I liked the emphasis that Professor Barr placed on informal dissemination of information by alternative means.
On the question of how to break the dominance of medics in driving health strategy, Professor Barr suggested developing collaborative approaches while trying to integrate the medics, not alienating them and, if that failed, to move forward without them. We have at least one situation though, where medical students are driving the process the IPE in a rural community that our students are placed in. There are plenty of examples where the medics are not only willing to participate but are actually leading the way.
“Research what you teach. Teach what you research” – Professor Renfrew Christie, Dean of Research
We need to acknowledge and understand that IPE in undergraduate education is only a first step towards real collaborative practice in health systems. It’s too much to expect that after a month or two of spending time together, our students will simply know how to develop shared objectives and interventions with other professions.