A systematic review of the effectiveness of interprofessional education in health professional programs☆
Introduction
Universities are committed to the preparation of graduates who will be able to work as effective members of the health care team. Nursing, medicine, pharmacy, and other allied health graduates are required to work both collaboratively and autonomously in complex clinical environments. This requires effective teamwork and communication skills. Currently, most university-based health professional education is delivered in a discipline specific mode. This approach is limited in its capacity to equip graduates with the knowledge, skills or attitudes for interprofessional collaboration and for working effectively as part of a complex health care team (Garling, 2008). It is claimed that interprofessional education (IPE) is a strategy for addressing these concerns. Interprofessional education occurs when “learners from two or more professions learn about, from and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improved health outcomes” (Center for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education, 2002). The fundamental premise of IPE is that if health professional students learn together they will be better prepared for interprofessional collaboration and teamwork, ultimately leading to improved patient care (Barr et al., 2005). However, the evidence in support of this premise tends to be more anecdotal than empirical.
Section snippets
Background
IPE has been proposed as an innovative approach for addressing many contemporary healthcare challenges. The World Health Organization (WHO) has provided global support of IPE through various initiatives that began as early as 1973. One of the most significant examples is the Learning Together to Work Together for Health Report (World Health Organization [WHO], 1988) which promoted IPE as a way to enhance collaboration and interprofessional teamwork. More recently, the WHO's recently published
Aim of Review
The aim of this review was to appraise and synthesise the best available evidence on the effectiveness of IPE in university-based health professional programs.
Types of Participants
The review considered studies that include students of two or more undergraduate or post-graduate health professions engaged in interprofessional education, regardless of gender, age or discipline.
Types of Intervention(s)/phenomena of Interest
The review considered studies that include any formal university-based pedagogical approaches to interprofessional education.
Types of Outcomes
The review
Results
The search strategy identified 4217 papers, of which 75 papers were deemed potentially relevant to this review, based on the assessment of title and abstracts. After removal of duplicates and detailed examination, full texts were retrieved for the remaining 12 studies. After analysis of methodological quality, nine papers were identified for data extraction and analysis of results. The details of the selection process are presented in Table 3.
Attitudinal Changes
This systematic review was undertaken to investigate the effectiveness of university-based IPE. There was evidence of attitudinal changes in three of the studies reviewed (Ateah et al., 2011, Becker and Godwin, 2005, Bradley et al., 2009) and two studies (Goelen et al., 2006, Street et al., 2007) reported mixed findings. The RCT by Street et al. (2007) reported significant changes in attitudes towards IPE in nursing students only, and Goelen et al. (2006) found statistically significant
Conclusion
The results of this review indicate that student's attitudes towards interprofessional collaboration and clinical decision-making ability may be enhanced through IPE. However, little evidence exists in regard to whether the gains attributed to IPE can be sustained over time. Additionally, the evidence for using IPE to teach interprofessional communication skills, patient care objectives and clinical skills such as resuscitation is inconclusive and needs further investigation. It is important to
Acknowledgements
Support for this project has been provided by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd., an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. The views expressed in the project do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. We would like to acknowledge the input and support of the project team and reference group. A list of project team members is available on the project website: //www.ipeforqum.com.au
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This article is derived from a systematic review available in the Joanna Briggs Institute Library of Systematic Reviews.
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