Interprofessional collaboration: three best practice models of interprofessional education.

Interprofessional education is a collaborative approach to develop healthcare students as future interprofessional team members and a recommendation suggested by the Institute of Medicine. Complex medical issues can be best addressed by interprofessional teams. Training future healthcare providers to work in such teams will help facilitate this model resulting in improved healthcare outcomes for patients. In this paper, three universities, the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, the University of Florida and the University of Washington describe their training curricula models of collaborative and interprofessional education.The models represent a didactic program, a community-based experience and an interprofessional-simulation experience. The didactic program emphasizes interprofessional team building skills, knowledge of professions, patient centered care, service learning, the impact of culture on healthcare delivery and an interprofessional clinical component. The community-based experience demonstrates how interprofessional collaborations provide service to patients and how the environment and availability of resources impact one's health status. The interprofessional-simulation experience describes clinical team skills training in both formative and summative simulations used to develop skills in communication and leadership.One common theme leading to a successful experience among these three interprofessional models included helping students to understand their own professional identity while gaining an understanding of other professional's roles on the health care team. Commitment from departments and colleges, diverse calendar agreements, curricular mapping, mentor and faculty training, a sense of community, adequate physical space, technology, and community relationships were all identified as critical resources for a successful program. Summary recommendations for best practices included the need for administrative support, interprofessional programmatic infrastructure, committed faculty, and the recognition of student participation as key components to success for anyone developing an IPE centered program.

Allport's Intergroup Contact Theory as a theoretical base for impacting student attitudes in interprofessional education.

Interprofessional education has been defined as "members or students of two or more professionals associated with health or social care, engaged in learning with, from and about each other". Ideally, students trained using interprofessional education paradigms become interprofessional team members who gain respect and improve their attitudes about each other, and ultimately improve patient outcomes. However, it has been stated that before interprofessional education can claim its importance and successes, its impact must be critically evaluated. What theory can explain the impact that interprofessional education seems to have on changing students' attitudes of other professionals and positively affecting their performance as interprofessional healthcare team members? The authors of this paper suggest conditions identified in Gordon Allport's Contact Theory may be used as a theoretical base in interprofessional education to positively impact attitudinal change of students towards working as an interprofessional team member. For the purpose of this paper, equal status and common goals will be the two conditions highlighted as a theoretical base in interprofessional education. The premise to be explored in this paper is that utilizing a sound theoretical base in interprofessional education may positively impact students' attitudes towards working in interprofessional teams.