Interprofessional and Team-Based Continuing Education For Health Professionals

Abstract

The benefits of implementing interprofessional and team­based programs are well recognized. However, for interprofes­ sional education to  be effective and broadly implemented, the health professions, policymakers, insurers, academic institutions, health care providers, and regulatory bodies should embrace and adopt a new, interprofessional education framework. These stakeholders should create a shared value and vision for interprofessional health professions’ educa­ tion, research, and practice. This vision should be patient­oriented and contain a measurable component across the entire educational continuum, from admission into a health professional program through retirement. Such a framework would maximize and value the strengths of individual professions in the integrated delivery of high quality care. Finally, in creating a successful model, a series of questions should be considered: how  best can team competence be measured, how should individual behavioral changes be documented when we think of individual rather than team­level changes, how do we create and measure performance criteria based on shared understanding and experience in the practice setting? Within academic settings, there are more specific barriers including a lack of administrative support, financial and human resources for interprofessional education, conflicts in schedules and health professions’ curricula, and limitations to the time required to plan and implement faculty development for interprofessional learning. Finally, despite progress, there remain regulatory and professional barriers to achieving full and meaningful implementation of effective models. Recom­ mendations which  are given emphasize that investing in research to evaluate the efficacy of continuing education and its impact on patient outcomes and the healthcare delivery system is inherent in this process.