Interprofessional Education In Canada

Interprofessional working is defined as ‘persons belonging to a profession, relating between and among each other, for the mutual benefit of those involved’ (Day, 2006), whilst attempting to improve the quality of patient care and unite the multidisciplinary team to focus on patient centred, excellent care (Goodman & Clemow, 2010). Interprofessional workers in the healthcare setting can include nursing staff from all fields; adult, mental health, learning disabilities and paediatrics, as well as the wider multidisciplinary team within the ward setting, such as occupational therapists, physiotherapists, doctors, podiatrists, furthermore, expanding from the ward setting to include community nurses, social workers, health visitors and midwives. Interprofessional working enables and encourages these professionals to combine their values and beliefs to focus on the patients and to deliver excellent, patient centred care. This therefore allows them to share a common purpose and goal whilst combining their knowledge, skills and resources as a team (Day, 2006).

Interprofessional Education, IPE event took place on July 22nd, 2016. The purpose of IPE is for us to learn how to work together as a health care team effectively collaborating with other health care members. In order to do so, each individual needed to understand not only his or her role and responsibility of a given role but also other team members’ roles and responsibilities. In our event, it was Interprofessional Health care Team Simulation with roles of a registered practical nurse and a Food Service supervisor, and a registered social worker and a personal support worker and a patient and her family member. We were given the scenario with the patient, Mrs. Johnston, 93 years old resident of a nursing home. My role was a RPN. The situation given was that we were asked by the patient’s family member to have a meeting with the health care team since her family member was concerned about her declining health status accompanied by her body weight loss.

As time goes by, people get infected with new diseases or current prevailing diseases. Consequently, new drugs are produced in an attempt to overcome these diseases, which results in patients with complex health needs. The complexity of the patients’ healthcare therefore needs to be addressed by more than one discipline. Interprofessional collaborative care is a type of health care that involves people from different professions working together and relying on each other to provide effective care to patients. Interprofessional collaborative care is important and predominantly a focus of the health care reform because it improves healthcare outcome for the patients and reduces disagreements between different professions. I was able to experience interprofessional care when my grandma was diagnosed with cancer. The physician and the pharmacist worked together in ensuring that she got the proper medication that would not have any side effects on her. In addition, the physician would call the pharmacy every two weeks to check on my grandma’s progress and to ensure that she had picked up her medications. Both my grandma and I were grateful because we felt that our needs were taken care of appropriately. Moreover, interprofessional health care is important in a curriculum because if helps the students to be better prepared to work as a team. This is achieved by teaching students about their own profession while receiving an understanding of the other professions and the roles they

The National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standard 2 Partnering with Consumers requires all health professionals to provide consumer-centred care and to design the care in partnership with the patient and the family (Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in health Care, 2012). The NSQHS Standards (2012) identified patient and family-centred care and engagement as one of the national priorities. As such, in order to improve patients’ safety outcomes and reduce hospital acquired conditions and readmissions and provide client centred services, the IPE recognized the need for effective interprofessional teams to collaborate and engage patients and families by implementing IPE core structures and processes (Brewer & Jones, 2013). The Curtin University’s ICF encompasses five interprofessional capabilities: “reflection, communication, team function, conflict resolution, and role clarification” (Brewer & Jones, 2013, p. e47). The purpose of ICF is to guide and assist health care students for collaborative practice to deliver safe and high quality care, and client-centred care (Curtin University, 2011). Therefore, health science students are expected to be competent in all skills and meet the criteria outlined in Curtin University’ ICF.

On the other hand, The Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education (CAIPE 2017) accentuate the importance of interprofessional education as is aiming to provide the students the opportunity to acknowledge the significance of interprofessioanl working and its impact on practice through exposure and engagement to collaborating working from an early stage and implemented in the training.

Hall and Waver ( 2001) defines Interprofessional as a group of professionals from different disciplines such as nurses, doctors, pharmacist that are working and communicating with each other while providing their knowledge, skills and attributes to enhance and support the contributions of others. Suter et al (2009) also said that the ability to work in an interprofessional team to convey collaborative, patient-centered care is an important aspect of professional practice that involves a possession of a particular set of competencies, such as communication skills. In relation to (Weinstein et al., 2003) Collaboration is the collection of knowledge, skills, values and motives which transforms to effective practice when applied by practitioners.

Attending the “Interprofessional Education” (IPE) session was extremely beneficial and informational for me as an occupational therapy (OT) student. It was beneficial for me for one of two reasons: first it enabled me to inform and educate other professional students about OT. We are told in our program that many professions are unaware of what we do, and that we have to continuously advocate and educate others on what we do and why our profession is so important, in order to remain a profession. I was surprised to discover that so many different professions had never heard of OT. Many students thought OT was a branch of physical therapy, a career finding profession or had heard of OT but had no idea what it was. Secondly, it was beneficial for me to learn exactly what other professionals are doing and hear what their goals were in improving client care. Knowing what other professionals do will benefit my career so that I know who is writing the referrals and where I can refer my clients if needed to. In addition, when working on a health care team, aiming to be client centered, it is critical for each profession to be knowledgeable of one another so that each client is getting the maximal and most beneficial care needed.

In interprofessional care, it is important that the health care providers build skills that enhance interprofessional communication and interaction no matter what model is practiced. Successful interprofessional communication is a necessary competency that can ensure achievements of outcomes, improvement of team functioning, efficiency, and individual value (Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel, 2011). Training, simulation experiences, group projects, and personal interactions with other staff members can facilitating positive or negative interactions that can affect communication. To ensure that successful interprofessional communication and interaction, much consideration should also be given to the environment

This requires knowledge sharing of interdisciplinary teams and extensive responsible communication with patients, families, colleagues, and the community. Interprofessional communication is crucial since thorough and responsive information exchange and shared decision-making are the foundation of a successful IPE/CP.

For Creating Collaborative Care (C3) to be successful, it had to become an integral part of university life. To ensure the success of Creating Collaborative Care (C3), four domains were created to implement IPE experiences into university life. The first domain is curricular. This domain makes sure that IPE is implemented into academic curriculum. The curricular domain makes sure students have experiences that focus on IPE which will fulfill the first goal of Creating Collaborative Care (C3). To achieve the second and third goals first year students are required to take an IPE class and complete a group project to show their interprofessional skills.

From this class I understood that Interprofessional Education (IPE) is when two or more profession learn from, with and about each other. This collaboration is important in order to fulfill the patients’ needs that are becoming more complex, multi-faced and challenging day by day. It is also clear to me that no single profession in healthcare can adequately address all the demands of patients. Therefore, partnership between teams is required to provide a safe, timely, effective and equitable patient care. To have a smooth collaboration, it is necessary to learn from each other’s specializations, strength and experiences. In the real world, healthcare is an interdisciplinary team effort to provide the best possible service to a patient based on evidence based practices. Considering this, I had the

Interprofessional practice is a collaborative practice where multiple health professionals work together in health services to provide comprehensive services to their patients, families and communities to get a more effective result by improving the quality of work. The collaborative practise is basically used by the nursing team or other health care workers who are the member of interprofessional team. “A call for interprofessional team and collaborative practice development has been sounded across Canada because this model is viewed as the way to ensure that all professionals and providers can practice to the full potential of their role and competencies” (Potter, 2014). Interprofessional collaborative practice is a way to ensure that human health resources are used properly which help to decrease the duration time for achieving a quality care.

“Interprofessional working involves complex interactions between two or more members of different professional disciplines. It is a collaborative venture in which those involved share the common purpose of developing mutually negotiated goals achieved through agreed plans which are monitored and evaluated according to agreed procedures. This requires the pooling of knowledge and expertise to facilitate joint decision making based upon shared professional viewpoints” (Barrett, Sellman & Thomas, 2005, p18). How individuals collaborate and work towards a common goal for the benefit of the patient is essential for a swift recovery.

Problem: Interprofessional education (IPE) is an important component of the USD School of Health Sciences’ mission. Incorporating IPE events into current Medical Laboratory Science (MLS) curriculum is imperative but challenging.

As you have stated, there a number of benefits to interprofessional practice and education. Therefore, by making interprofessional education a required class it would benefit many students who are just starting their careers. This way, students would be able to get a better idea of understanding not only within their own professions but those they will have to work with on a daily basis. Furthermore, IPE is being recognized even moreso and supported by many organizations, such as the Institute of Medicine. This notable institution also stated, “health professionals should be educated to deliver patient-centered care as members of an interdisciplinary team…” (Buring, 2009). Another benefit to having IPE in colleges and other institutions is