Competent for collaborative practice: What does a collaborative practitioner look like and how does the practice context influence interprofessional education?

Improved health care through interprofessional collaboration is the overarching goal of interprofessional education [IPE] and collaborative practice [IPC]. Greater uptake of IPE and IPC requires us to have a clear understanding of the characteristics of an ideal collaborative practitioner. Knowing when IPC exists across health systems and agencies is critical for governments when considering ongoing funding for collaborative care models of service delivery. To achieve such models of care, practitioners need to understand and enact the competencies required for collaborative practice. A competency can be described as "an observable ability of a health professional, integrating multiple components, such as knowledge, skills, values and attitudes. Since competencies are observable, they can be measured and assessed to ensure their acquisition." A consistent framework for competencies is seen as one way of developing this knowledge and guiding IPE curriculum development, learning activities and assessment processes in both educational and practice settings. One example of a competency framework focused on interprofessional practice and guided by an integrative pedagogy was developed by the Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaboration [CIHC]. This framework provides a structure for assessing an individual's ability to collaborate based on the integration of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values leading to judgements in varying contexts. The framework posits that interprofessional competencies are consistent and stand the 'test of time', while associated descriptors are reflective of learners' or practitioners' experiential base and context. The competency framework is composed of six integrated competency domains that together result in interprofessional collaboration, with each possessing a set of corresponding indicators