Collaborative practice among early career staff is at the bedrock of interprofessional care. Milne, Greenfield and Braithwaite investigated factors influencing the enactment of interprofessional practice in a recent study using the day-to-day role of six junior doctors in three teaching hospitals as a gateway to understand the various professions’ interactive behaviours. The contextual framework used… Read More »

Accumulating health problems of the elderly requires recognition of geriatric syndromes, while shifting away from a conventional disease-specific approach.  Moore and colleagues recently surveyed 179 practitioners representing Family Physicians (FPs), Nurse Practitioners (NPs) and geriatricians in Ontario, in order to quantify how they prioritize syndromes, diseases and conditions in the elderly. Identifying differences may inform… Read More »

Goldberg et al.’s recent study analyzed students’ written reflections following their initial exposure to interprofessional teamwork in case-based problem-solving. A three-hour seminar featuring three sequenced scenarios was developed and offered 12-times over two semesters. A total of 305 students from a variety of healthcare programs worked together with standardized patients in an on-campus laboratory simulating… Read More »

The benefits of interprofessional care in providing mental health services have been widely recognized, particularly in rural communities where access to health services is limited. There continues to be a need for more continuing interprofessional education in mental health intervention in rural areas. There have been few reports of rural programs in which mental health… Read More »

Domestic violence (DV) is a major public health problem with high health and social costs. A solution to this multi-faceted problem requires that various help providers work together in an effective and optimal manner when dealing with different parties of DV.The objective of this research and development project (2008–2013) by Leppakoski and colleagues was to improve… Read More »

This meta-analysis by Sollami and colleagues investigated differences between nurses and physicians in interprofessional collaboration (IPC) ratings. Fifty-one surveys, representing a total of 18 782 professionals and students (13 132 nurses and nursing students, and 5650 physicians and medical students), were meta-analyzed, considering several moderating variables. Overall, nurses scored higher on IPC than physicians. Sensitivity analysis revealed… Read More »

Healthcare organisations are starting to implement collaborative practice to increase the quality of patient care. However, operationalising and measuring progress towards collaborative practice has proven to be difficult. Various interprofessional competency frameworks have been developed that outline essential collaborative practice competencies for healthcare providers. If these competencies were enacted to their fullest, collaborative practice would… Read More »

There has been sustained international interest from health care policy makers, practitioners, and researchers in developing interprofessional approaches to delivering patient-centred care. Ann Fox and Scott Reeves offer a critical exploration of a selection of professional discourses related to these practice paradigms, including interprofessional collaboration, patient-centred care, and the combination of the two. They argue… Read More »

For students interested in enriching their interprofessional competencies beyond those required and offered by their academic programs, an elective interprofessional education fellowship can serve that need. Amy Blue and colleagues designed a fellowship for students linking a conceptual framework grounded in adult learning principles. During the fellowship, students progress through three levels of learning as… Read More »

Coordination of perioperative work is challenging. Advancements in diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities have not been followed by similar advancements in the ability to coordinate care.  A recent study by Lillebo and Faxvaag explored the nature of continuous coordination as practiced by perioperative staff in order to coordinate their own activities with respect to those of… Read More »