Interprofessional Education for Collaboration

Every year, the Global Forum undertakes two workshops whose topics are selected by the more than 55 members of the Forum. It was decided in this first year of the Forum's existence that the workshops should lay the foundation for future work of the Forum and the topic that could best provide this base of understanding was "interprofessional education." The first workshop took place August 29-30, 2012, and the second was on November 29-30, 2012. Both workshops focused on linkages between interprofessional education (IPE) and collaborative practice. The difference between them was that Workshop 1 set the stage for defining and understanding IPE while Workshop 2 brought in speakers from around the world to provide living histories of their experience working in and between interprofessional education and interprofessional or collaborative practice.

A committee of health professional education experts planned, organized, and conducted a 2-day, interactive public workshop exploring issues related to innovations in health professions education (HPE). The committee involved educators and other innovators of curriculum development and pedagogy and will be drawn from at least four health disciplines. The workshop followed a high-level framework and established an orientation for the future work of the Global Forum on Innovations in Health Professional Education. Interprofessional Education for Collaboration: Learning How to Improve Health from Interprofessional Models Across the Continuum of Education to Practice summarizes the presentations and small group discussions that focused on innovations in five areas of HPE:

1. Curricular innovations - Concentrates on what is being taught to health professions' learners to meet evolving domestic and international needs;

2. Pedagogic innovations - Looks at how the information can be better taught to students and WHERE education can takes place;

3. Cultural elements - Addresses who is being taught by whom as a means of enhancing the effectiveness of the design, development and implementation of interprofessional HPE;

4. Human resources for health - Focuses on how capacity can be innovatively expanded to better ensure an adequate supply and mix of educated health workers based on local needs; and

5. Metrics - Addresses how one measures whether learner assessment and evaluation of educational impact and care delivery systems influence individual and population health.