Fostering Collaborative Excellence: Evolution and Impact of Interprofessional Education (IPE)

The interest in team-based approaches in the fields of primary care, community-based care, palliative care, and others in later 1960s and lead to the forming of IPE. The IPE movement began across several nations, such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States of America in the 1990s. CAIPE in the United Kingdom was the founder of IPE, which responsible for promoting high-quality developments in the practice and research of interprofessional education and training in primary health and social care.

Across the years, many foundations such as the Hartford Foundation, Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, and Josiah Macy Foundation were developed. These foundations had clarified the need for professional collaboration.

Besides, reports on ‘Health Professions Education’ by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) listed multiple international quality problems that faced by the USA nation and suggested how the healthcare system should be changed in practice and education. By 2005, professional organizations such as Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative (CIHC) and American Interprofessional Health Collaborative (AIHC) solidified the IOM vision by focusing on interprofessional collaborative practice as the primary means to overcome international quality problems.

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Then, both of the organizations teamed together to form the Collaborating across Boarders (CAB), which responsible for enhancing the IPE movement in the USA. In the same year, the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) is formed and introduced in the USA. On 2010, created sentinel reports ‘Framework for Action on Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice’, which defining IPE and identifying core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice. This framework also provides the most beneficial strategies and ideas in implementing the elements of interprofessional education and collaborative practice for health policy-makers.

Nowadays, the health care system is in the face of tremendous pressure, which is due to increasing global health issues, health care costs and needs, insufficient healthcare-related workforce, misunderstanding the role of health profession and disrespect for the contributions of health professionals. Further, current complex and uncoordinated healthcare delivery model causes the benefits of the healthcare system are not fully delivered to patients. Additionally, the increase in aging population reflects to an increase in the incidence and prevalence of chronic conditions. This often resulting in decreased quality and safety of the current healthcare model (Baker 2001). Thus, the World Health Organization (WHO) and its partnering organization identify interprofessional collaboration in education and practice as a new strategy that will be responsible for alleviating the challenges faced by the global health system and filling the gaps in current health care system.

Based on the review of the literature, the IOM recommendations, and motivating factors for IPE, most of the health sciences university decided to implement IPE in their curricular (Masten et al. 2013). In the effort of moving IPE, faculty and administrators must clearly understand and identify what IPE is and is not. At the same time, they can replace merely adding IPE content with a few courses or a couple of electives with an IPE that act as the “norm” comprehensive, integrative, curricular approach for the university (Blue et al. 2010). The process of interprofessional education and practice development is dynamic. At the same time, periodic self-assessment and realignment of the processes are required along with the IPE development for achieving and maintaining IPE development. There are 5 stages of IPE development, which are:

The process for IPE development starts from the faculty and educational or practice administrators finding out the usual health education system does not effective in achieving the expected interprofessional outcomes. Besides, the process of emerging awareness regarding the differences between interdisciplinary and interprofessional educational and practice activities are developed in this stage.

The process of professional struggling to change current health education framework into the interprofessional framework is shown in this stage. Examples of giving lip service are faculty spend time for conversations and working in task force groups to develop modules and courses and also to revise the curricula.

This stage includes the implementation of IPE activities on individual school or college, department, or course bases, which are collaboratively designed educational and practice activities. Parallel play at a health sciences university includes the development of interprofessional activities by one school or within the schools, either off-campus or after-hours activities by review and revision of the curriculum.

The group play stage of IPE development is demonstrated by involving other health professionals together in a similar health profession activity where learning occurs with and from each other. For examples, faculty experts develop broadening practice-based case studies that enrich case study simulation learning for all health professions students.

The cultural transformation achievement is due to well-planned cooperation, coordination, and collaboration by teams of health professionals with the aim to improve patient care. The achievement results in extremely clear, valued, and rewarding IPE implementation, such as system changes in support of IPE implementation by true IPE and practice faculty-to-faculty interactions with measurable productivity and implementation of IPE in clinical learning and practice experiences. Moreover, several studies are done to determine the necessity of implementing IPE in foundation and university level.

The study was done by Tran et al. with current students from programs in nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and medicine in Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden agreed interprofessional learning is crucial and essential and should be included in undergraduate courses (Tran et al. 2018). Besides, the study was done by Gilligan et al. with recent graduates from medicine, nursing and pharmacy who were working in New South Wales, Western Australia, and Tasmania noted IPE should be part of their pre-vocational education. Surprisingly, the report ‘Measuring the impact of interprofessional education on collaborative practice and patient outcomes’ stated the IOM suggests practice IPE with interprofessional learning continuum model. This model supports IPE should be in a continuous form throughout postgraduate education and continuing professional development instead of occurring in foundational education only.