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Interprofessional education: what's the point and where we're at...
In its broadest sense, medical and indeed all health education is still essentially conducted in silos, although there is now a growing recognition that medical education needs to be contextualised within the needs of the health workplace and co-ordinated across the education/training/practice continuum ... the growing provision of health care by teams rather than individuals, particularly for the aged and chronically ill, has presented the as yet largely unrealised challenge of interprofessional education and learning (1).
Health professionals work in teams to deliver quality patient care. Or do they? There are certainly teams in health care: primary care teams, rehabilitation teams, the mental health community team, to name but a few, and most of these teams are multiprofessional, which is one reason for health professional students to learn to work together during their training. The challenge for educators is making interprofessional education relevant to future workplace needs and, perhaps the more difficult task, to develop educational modules on teamwork that students can engage with and find clinically stimulating.
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