Welcome to the BHECN Locator Page for Learning Collaborative Resources. Below, you’ll find information and resources useful for the health care professional to develop and improve interprofessional practices.
Grace Abbott School of Social Work Continuing Education Program
The programs at Grace Abbott offer undergraduate and graduate degree options. Some of these programs meet the criteria of an approved continuing education program for social work and mental health practice. Registration is required and fees may vary.
Framework for action on interprofessional education and collaborative practice
The Framework for Action on Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice highlights the current status of interprofessional collaboration around the world, identifies the mechanisms that shape successful collaborative teamwork and outlines a series of action items that policy-makers can apply within their local health system.
Theories to Aid Understanding and Implementation of Interprofessional Education (IPE)
Multiple events are calling for greater interprofessional collaboration and communication, including initiatives aimed at enhancing patient safety and preventing medical errors. Education is one way to increase collaboration and communication, and is an explicit goal of interprofessional education (IPE). Yet health professionals to date are largely educated in isolation. IPE differs from most traditional continuing education in that knowledge is largely socially created through interactions with others and involves unique collaborative skills and attitudes. It requires thinking differently about what constitutes teaching and learning.
Shared ethical principles for everybody in health care: a working draft from the Tavistock Group
Health care delivery in many countries has expanded over the past 150 years from a largely social service delivered by individual practitioners to an intricate network of services provided by teams of professionals. The problems of increasing resource consumption, financial constraints, complexity, and poor system design that have emerged as consequences of these changes have exacerbated many of the ethical tensions inherent in health care and have created new ones. Many groups of professionals that give and affect health care have established separate codes of ethics for their own disciplines, but no shared code exists that might bring all stakeholders in health care into a more consistent moral framework. A multidisciplinary group therefore recently met at Tavistock Square in London in an effort to prepare such a shared code. The result was not a code but a more basic and generic statement of ethical principles. The intent and hope is that it will offer clear guidance for tough calls in real world settings. It is presented here not as a finished work, but as a draft to elicit comment, critique, suggestions for revision, and, especially, ideas for implementation.
Designing and implementing a skills program using a clinically integrated, multi-professional approach: Using evaluation to drive curriculum change
The essential procedural skills that newly graduated doctors require are rarely defined, do not take into account pre-vocational employer expectations, and differ between Universities. This paper describes how one Faculty used local evaluation data to drive curriculum change and implement a clinically integrated, multi-professional skills program. A curriculum restructure included a review of all undergraduate procedural skills training by academic staff and clinical departments, resulting in a curriculum skills map. Undergraduate training was then linked with postgraduate expectations using the Delphi process to identify the skills requiring structured standardized training. The skills program was designed and implemented without a dedicated simulation center. This paper shows the benefits of an alternate model in which clinical integration of training and multi-professional collaboration encouraged broad ownership of a program and, in turn, impacted the clinical experience obtained.
Promising Scope of Practice Models for the Health Professions
Legal scopes of practice for the health professions exist in statutes enacted by the state legislature and in regulations developed and implemented by administrative agencies, such as health professions boards. The purpose of this brief is to examine scope of practice issues within the context of improving access to care in California. First, out of the hundreds of differences in scopes of practice between California and other states, we will highlight a small sampling and compare the California scopes of practice of four occupations to more expansive scopes of practice in other states or institutions. Secondly, this brief will discuss efforts to improve scope of practice decision-making.
Not just another multi-professional course! Part 1 and Part 2
Undergraduate inter- and multi-professional education has traditionally aimed to develop health professionals who are able to collaborate effectively in comprehensive healthcare delivery. The respective professions learn from and about each other through comparisons of roles, responsibilities, powers, duties and perspectives in order to promote integrated service. Described here is the educational rationale of a multi-professional course with a difference; one that injects value to undergraduate health professional education through the development of critical cross-field knowledge, skills and attitudes that unite rather than differentiate professions.
Keys to Successful Implementation of Interprofessional Education: Learning, Location, Faculty Development, and Curricular Themes
Although there is evidence to support implementing interprofessional education (IPE) in the health sciences, widespread implementation in health professions education is not yet a reality. Challenges include the diversity in location and settings of schools and colleges, ie, many are not located within an academic health center. Faculty members may not have the necessary skill set for teaching in an IPE environment. Certain topics or themes in a pharmacy curriculum may be more appropriate than others for teaching in an IPE setting. This paper offers solutions to teaching IPE in diverse settings, the construct for implementing a faculty development program for IPE, and suggested curricular topics with their associated learning objectives, potential teaching methods, and timelines for implementation.
Interprofessional Education
Today, Yesterday and Tomorrow
Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality
In response to the April 2003 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report titled Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality, the author assesses the report in light of the present education of professional nurses. While current educational approaches have merit, the plans under way to develop new curricula and programs are in keeping with the IOM recommendations. She also cites the importance of reform in nursing practice environments if nursing education strategies are to have a meaningful impact.
Evaluating Interprofessional Education: A Self-Help Guide
Beginning the process of teamwork: Design, implementation and evaluation of an inter-professional education intervention for first year undergraduate students
An evidence-based interprofessional educational (IPE) intervention involving first year undergraduate students studying medicine, nursing, physiotherapy and occupational therapy was piloted at the University of Liverpool. Campbell's phased approach and Complexity Theory guided development of the intervention and its evaluation. Publication
Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is an independent not-for-profit organization helping to lead the improvement of health care throughout the world. Founded in 1991 and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, IHI works to accelerate improvement by building the will for change, cultivating promising concepts for improving patient care, and helping health care systems put those ideas into action. Podcast available.