Background: Although teamwork and interprofessional collaboration are critical to patient safety, nursing, medical, and allied health graduates often feel ill-prepared to confidently communicate and collaborate with other team members. While interprofessional education (IPE) has been advocated as a way of addressing this issue, there are multiple barriers to its systematic and sustained integration in undergraduate healthcare programs. Despite these challenges, examples of effective IPE initiatives have emerged.
Innovation: This article profiles seven case studies of innovative interprofessional education activities that have been successfully implemented across five countries, for a variety of learners, using different delivery modalities, and with evaluation results attesting to their success.
Conclusions: The case studies demonstrate innovative ideas that have the potential to overcome some of the barriers to IPE through the use of creative and targeted approaches. This article provides a wealth of ideas for the successful design and implementation of IPE initiatives and will be of benefit to educators wishing to expand their repertoire of teaching approaches.
Clinical relevance: A body of research attests to the relationship between interprofessional communication, teamwork, and patient outcomes. IPE is imperative for facilitating the development of nursing graduates' communication and teamwork skills; however, innovative approaches are needed to overcome the perceived and actual impediments to its implementation.
Keywords: Collaborative practice; communication; interprofessional education; nursing student; patient outcomes; teamwork.
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