Interprofessional Collaboration

Abstract

This study addresses the critical need for innovation in public health workforce training and continuing education to foster effective interprofessional collaboration. The focus of this study was to assess the impact of interprofessional collaboration on practitioners who were charged with creating an interprofessional (IP) care model emphasizing primary and secondary prevention services specific for seniors with diabetes. The impact of interprofessional collaboration as an intervention for practitioners was assessed using a half day problem-based learning workshop and facilitated group sessions over a six month time period. Practitioner subjects representing disciplines of physician's assistant, physical therapy, pharmacy, nursing, …show more content…
Using an authentic task-based curriculum and guidelines for required care protocols, these practitioner subjects completed a specific workshop about IP care collaboration and four facilitated work sessions. The impact of participating in an IP team was measured using pre-test and post-test instruments including the Interprofessional Education Perception Scale (IEPS) to assess attitudes and the Concerns Based Adoption Model (C-BAM) to assess actual behaviors related to interprofessional collaboration. Results of this research provided a workforce training and facilitated team building model that can be used to enhance interprofessional collaboration. The study demonstrates a process for implementing a continuing education program that engages an interprofessional healthcare team in the creation of an effective preventive care model. This preventive care model responds to the need to develop new methods for ongoing training of the public health workforce in an interprofessional collaborative process. Initial findings are promising in that this innovative approach to continuing education resulted in both increased interprofessional collaboration behaviors and more favorable attitudes about working in …show more content…
Beaglehole and Dal Poz (1) relate this challenge to the traditional emphasis on formal academic and didactic training with very limited attention being paid to training methods that are field-based continuing education where the workforce can participate in work group training that addresses the diversity and complexity of the healthcare team from a wide range of occupational backgrounds (1). Patients today have complex medical issues requiring more than one healthcare professional which calls for interprofessional collaboration (2). In 2001, acknowledging the medically challenging needs of patients, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on Quality of Health Care in America recommended that healthcare professionals be able to work in interprofessional (IP) teams (3). The research of Schofield et al. demonstrated that, especially for complex, chronic conditions, a multidisciplinary, or IP, team offers many advantages for patients and their families (4). Bringing an interprofessional focus to the development of innovative care delivery models requires collaboration among the health professions to increase learning about, from and with each other, as well as incorporation of a patient centered perspective (5). A growing consensus exists that interprofessional (IP) team- based care offers the potential to improve quality of care and lower costs (6). However,

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