Interprofessional Education and the Framework and Policies that Encourage Interprofessional Working - Coursework Example

Interprofessional Education In the modern world, patients have developed complicated health needs that require several discplines in health to address them accordingly; for instance, a patient suffering from cardiovascular diseases as a result of diabetes will require specialists in heart problems, diabetes and maybe a fitness expert to help him or her recover. The interprofessional teams work by sharing their expertise and perspectives, which are aimed at achieving a common goal of helping in restoration of a patient’s health status while at the same time ensuring optimal use of resources (DAmour et al, 2005). In order to achieve this end, several strategies have been used to ensure harmonious coordination; some of these strategies include interprofessional education (IPE), policies and framework that support interprofessional collaboration in provision of health services. This essay will discuss in detail interprofessional education and the framework and policies that encourage interprofessional working. Interprofessional education is defined as the application of the process of adult learning to interactive group based learning with joint learning for a combined practise with an objective that is informed by consideration of interpersonal and group organizational relations, the aim of which is to improve collaborative practise. Many health systems in the world are detached from each other which makes them struggle to meet needs of patients most of which end up being unmet. In the past, health care professionals have been faced with the challenge of providing health care services to patients with complex issues, this trend has become more complicated with medical problems becoming more complex (Freeth & Association for the Study of Medical Education. 2007). Evidence shows that health professional workers who in the course of their duties gain some form of interprofessional competency have the necessary skills to be part of a team of interprofessional workforce that can handle complex medical conditions. Interprofessional education usually happens when individuals in two or more disciplines of health learn with, from and about each other to enable them to work together effectively to advance wellbeing outcomes as a result of changing health needs. To the service users and carers, there is scanty evidence that is present to show that the users and carers are involved in the educational programmes; therefore, there is a lot of disagreement as to what the role of service users in interprofessional education design, delivery and evaluation. Integration of users’ knowledge and expertise in interprofessional education should be encouraged; this is because the users have the knowledge on the performance of the current service and its impact. Some researchers have downplayed the expertise of service users arguing that they are not trained in any medical field. However, in some instances, appeals have been made to acknowledge the expertise of users and therefore include them in evidence-based practise. Including service users in the planning, delivery and evaluation of interprofessional education is crucial since their input gives a holistic view to the quality and effectiveness of the interprofessional education. A national continuous quality improvement tool for mental health education and a handbook and implementation guide (Freeth, 2001) have been developed to assist in the development of post qualifying mental health education where the feedback of service users has been pivotal in planning, delivery and evaluation of the education programme. To the service providers who also double up as health professionals, interprofessional education helps in creation of a flexible workforce and improving the quality of service which will be able to meet the changing needs in health (Freeth, 2005). For the health professionals, the benefits that accrue for the education also include the reduction in communication breakdowns, as they understand each other. Interprofessional education is also likely to boost the morale and efficiency of the team members and in addition reduce cases of unhelpful protectionism. During the training of health professionals, students usually focus on their area of specialisation, which makes them have a narrow perspective, and it is only after several years in their professions that they become exposed to other disciplines. Adopting IPE reverses this perspective challenge and boosts personal and professional confidence, facilitates communication between different professionals and encourage reflective practise. A challenge in ensuring the health sector reaps maximum benefits in this area is the little attention that has been given for the accreditation of IPE therefore; health institutions attach different value to IPE. in UK, a starting point to ensure that the health sector reap optimal benefits from IPE is the NHS knowledge and skills framework ( DH, 2004) and agenda for change process (DH, 2004) which can help in identifying health professionals with the right combination of skills to meet IPE needs. To institutions of higher learning, integrated learning of different professions can help in promoting creativity in teaching and research while at the same time fostering interpofessional cooperation; in addition, it can also open up possibilities for practical application such as interprofessional project work. Another probable benefit of IPE to institution of higher learning is the opportunity it presents for cost reduction; however, this is difficult to prove from the studies that have been conducted. In order to achieve the above benefits, the National Health Service (NHS) in UK has adopted strategies to make IPE effective; this has been to divide IPE into different groups for easier and effective management. One of the groups is the specific disease group, which aims at creating competencies for providing treatment for sexually transmitted infections within primary health care (DH, 2005). The differences in the way different professions conduct their activities is used as a teaching and learning method in IPE, for instance how confidence in partnership working can be used by nurses working in acute sector to work with community matrons in provision of primary care. Creating an Interprofessional workforce programme (CIPW), which is a three year programme supported by the department of health in England aims at making a framework for education and training which will improve collaborative practise and partnership working between health and social care (Reeves et al, 2008). The use of this interprofessional education as a strategy to improve interprofessional collaboration has had a great impact on the practise and with proper guidelines and commitment to its implementation, it is likely to have a greater impact on outcomes of medical interventions. Developing a curriculum to allow individuals from different medical professions to train together has allowed individuals to learn more about the other professions therefore appreciating them in the role that they play in provision of health services. The improvements in the quality of health services in UK and the world in general can be partially attributed to training in interprofessional collaboration (Hopkins et al, 2010). The impact of IPE is especially visible in handling patients with multiple complications that require more than one profession to be handled diligently, for instance a complex medical surgery involving several organ experts. Since the field of interprofessional collaboration is relatively new, most of the professionals in practise have not passed through the IPE therefore the need to look for an alternative way to ensure they embrace this form of working in one way or another (I E C E P, 2011). Health care workers have for a long time acted in disharmony and a competitive manner, which had negative impact to the quality of service that patients received. For instance, doctors would look down upon nurses as inferior therefore they would disregard their opinion regardless of how valid they were, on the other hand, nurses felt inferior therefore even when their input would help in improving the quality of care that a patient received they opted not to act. These wrangles between different professionals in the sector always led to communication breakdown. The power that patients have on the type of care that they receive or the professional to be involved in their cases also underpins the need for interprofessional collaboration to meet the needs of clients. Differences in philosophies of care also necessitates for interprofessional collaboration since different groups have different moral and ethical regulations in patients’ care, for instance the difference in approach between cure-geared medicine versus the public health professionals whose approach is preventive oriented. Different professions also have different pay scales and budgetary allocations, which have been source of conflicts among health professionals; therefore, encouraging interprofessional collaboration will help resolve some of these issues by providing a rationale why the allocations and pay scales are different. In order to improve interprofessional collaboration in the health sector, there is need to have common philosophies in health care, for instance ethical issues in health. To achieve this, health professional need to possess communication skills, in addition, they also need to be very knowledgeable on common ethical issues in health care provision in order for them to be able to influence the decisions made by the teams that they belong to. Having ethical knowledge enables health professionals to contribute positively to discussions on ethical issues that will help them collectively improve the quality of health care. Another way that the authorities are improving interprofessional collaboration is through the use of common standards in medical records where a good medical record keeping needs to be able to follow up on the progress of clients, the name of the most senior health official who was present when a patient is being seen should be included in the record, when a patient’s physician changes, the new physician’s name should be indicated. Furthermore where the records of a patient does not show any name of a physician who has previously treated him, then the next medical professional to examine him should explain why the name of previous physician(s) is not indicated. In order improve interprofessional collaboration, there is need to increase on funding for refresher courses on the medical professional who did not get a chance at IPE, this means that institutions must adopt cost effective measures in order to have surplus money for the training. However, this is a long-term measure to reduce costs, as the quality of health services will be manifest after the professionals have gained enough expertise in interprofessional collaboration. In order to save on costs that are related to technological upgrades, collaborating with several institutions including technology firms such as Microsoft will drastically reduce the cost technological upgrades. Due to increase in demand of training especially in health care, collaborating of institutions with institutions that have fully operational training manuals for in service health professionals would help them reduce the cost of hiring or constructing additional training facilities. Instead of hiring full time trainers, institutions should hire more part time trainers with long class time, this will save costs since lectures will only be paid the number of hours that they train. Practical examples regarding interprofessional collaboration was evident in the time that we spent with contact persons from visiting teams. The teams focussed on health and social care where they were divided in to two groups; the initial intervention team and the core team where the initial intervention team was responsible for primary care and the core team was responsible for complex cases. One of the challenges that the two teams which had professionals from different fields was conflicts between the roles that they were each supposed to play, however, with time they were each able to play their roles without unnecessary conflict. Interprofessional collaboration among the team members had positive results to the community in that it reduced delayed discharge and improved efficiency for both the clients and the team. This allowed issues to be identified early enough, which made it possible to reduce unnecessary admissions therefore saving on cost to the client and the facility, which can be used to treat other needy cases. According to the team, their interprofessional education had several benefits that could be seen during the contact days we had with them. Some of those benefits included; they were able to understand the roles of other professionals and the team dynamics. In addition, the team members were able to value the importance of teamwork in taking care of their clients. References DAmour, D., Ferrada-Videla, M., San Martin Rodriguez, L., & Beaulieu, M. D. 2005. “The conceptual basis for interprofessional collaboration: Core concepts and theoretical frameworks.” Journal of interprofessional care, Vol 19 no S1, pp.116-131. Department of health. 2004, key issues for primary care: national service framework for children, young people and maternity services, DH, London Department of health. 2005, creating a patient-led NHS: delivering the NHS improvement plan, DH, London. Freeth, D. 2000. Effective interprofessional education: Development, delivery and evaluation. Blackwell Pub Oxford. Freeth, D. 2001, “Sustaining interprofessional collaboration.” Journal of interprofessional care, Vol 15, no 1, pp.37-46. Freeth, D., & Association for the Study of Medical Education. 2007. Interprofessional education. Association of the Study of Medical Education. Edinburgh. Hopkins, D., Burton, A., Hammick, M., & Hoffman, S. J. 2010. Framework for action on interprofessional education & collaborative practice. WHO: Geneva. I. E. C. E.P. 2011. Core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Report of an expert panel. Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel. NY. Reeves, S., & Lewin, S. 2004, “Interprofessional collaboration in the hospital: strategies and meanings.” Journal of Health Services Research & Policy, Vol 9, no 4, pp. 218-225. Read More