A Crucial Element of Health Professional Education is Interprofessional Education
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Dr. Chulani Herath, Director Center for Quality Assurance, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology & Counselling, Faculty of Health Sciences, The Open University of Sri Lanka
Interprofessional Education (IPE) is mainly conceptualised as a collaborative approach to develop healthcare aiming to face future challenges in health. Collaborative practice has been advocated as one of the best strategies for health care systems to adopt when trying to improve outcomes and enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of practice and improves patient outcomes. In other words, effective collaborative practice approach is designed for health professional team members to share and understand the responsibilities, skills, knowledge, trust and functions of every member of the team for treatment decisions and patient outcomes. Concerning medical errors and health care quality as significant source of global morbidity and mortality, the concept of ‘interprofessional education’ (IPE) emerged in the late 1980s to address these concerns. Interprofessional education has been identified by accreditation agencies and professional organizations as essential to achieving safe, quality patient- centered care. Understanding the value of inter-professional collaboration is important to improve the effectiveness of healthcare organisations.
In the literature, IPE implementation is defined as the spread of best practices and the use of best evidence that requires whole system change. IPE implementation is regarded as influential concerning the attitudes and behavior of policy makers in health institutions. It is expected that the quality of IPE implementation serves to standardization of practice, health workers culture and staff engagement system such as how to behave in a collaborative manner with other health professionals, contents across the health care system, improve quality of service delivery and enhance patients’ care. Apart from that IPE implementations are mostly taking place in developed regions. Literatures on IPE implementation in developing and/ or under developing countries are limited compared with developed countries.
In health education setting however, the success of IPE does not only depend on the presence of Interprofessional Collaborative Practices (IPCP), but it also depends on how IPCP are delivered to the patients. For example, health professionals are selected and recruited, and training is provided. If not first trained them and then recruited to health care delivery institutions. These provisions of collaborative practices to the patients are known as implementation of IPE. Establishing and sustaining of evidence based collaborative practices as an essential component of health care transformation is a significant undertaking can be perceived by health professionals, collaborative practices need to be implemented via different so called health education and delivery institutions. In doing so, the quality of implementation of IPE can differ between delivery channels, for example, less knowledge on IPE and IPCP, lack of IPCP capabilities or deliver collaborative practices inconsistently. Quality in IPE implementation should thereby construe the importance of high service quality attitudes and high service quality behavior to health professionals and patients.
The evidence on worldwide IPE in undergraduate and postgraduate education, the results of studies provide valuable insight for related researchers regarding the necessity of IPE in health education. Notably, the assessment of the effectiveness of IPE’s was also an important aspect. The quality of IPE programmes varied substantially across different countries. In many developing countries are still struggling to implement this concept. They face so many challenges due to less human and physical capacities.
Concerning the complex health care needs of contemporary society requires health care professionals to work as a collaborative team. Safe, quality health care depends on the ability of the health care team to cooperate, communicate and share skills and knowledge appropriately. Despite significant advances in healthcare development, healthcare systems the world over are facing increasing challenges. The most important of these is the sharp rise in healthcare needs that is occurring at the same time as a severe lack of human resources in the health sector. The labour shortage limits the effectiveness both of healthcare systems and healthcare delivery. The extent of the shortage varies from country to country and has several different causes. These problems include increased workload and burnout, job dissatisfaction, and lack of effective communication among healthcare professionals in healthcare organisations. In response to these issues, there is renewed interest in finding ways to improve the healthcare system through improving issues around access, quality, and effectiveness. Identifying such challenges hassled an increased emphasis on the importance of providing cost-effective quality care, promoting wellness, and creating prevention strategies that take patients’ needs into account. The current focus in health care has shifted towards a more patient centeredness approach using interprofessional collaboration to achieve optimal patient outcomes.
As a consequence of ineffective teamwork, patients suffer through redundant procedures, miscommunication, and lack of coordinated care. Patients often complain that providers do not coordinate care, causing them to repeatedly provide the same information to different members of the healthcare team. IPE takes place when students from multiple professions learn with and from one another and effectively collaborate in order to improve patient outcomes. It also allows students to learn about the training and experiences of other health professionals and to improve perceptions of other healthcare team members. IPE can play a key role in creating top-performing interdisciplinary teams. Healthcare professionals cannot first be educated in the entire and then be expected to work successfully in a truly collaborative environment. Academic institutions should ensure that education occurs in an inter-professional environment that emphasises communication and collaboration among health professional students. Inter-professional education and collaborative practice can positively contribute to some of the world’s most urgent health challenges. For example: Family and community health, HIV/AIDS tuberculosis and malaria, non-communicable diseases and mental health, Health action in crisis, Health security, health systems and services.
Health systems, in Sri Lanka is under increasing pressure because existing workforce shortages, increasing incidence of chronic illness and non-communicable diseases is placing ever-greater demands on already stretched health services within the area of patient safety, a recurring theme identified in many patient care inquiries is that ineffective teamwork is an underlying cause of many adverse events, inadequate understanding of and respect for the contributions of other health professions. However, inadequate coordination between governments, planners, educators and service providers; fragmented roles and responsibilities; inflexible regulatory practices; are all cited as barriers to the development of innovative, flexible and efficient models of care. However, higher education system in Sri Lanka is traditionally based on profession-specific education criteria, and clinical specialisation has long been fostered and emphasised by health policies in Sri Lanka. As relatively new concepts in Sri Lanka, interprofessional education and practice urgently need to be studied.
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