Practicing what we preach for successful interprofessional education

While attending a workshop on moral deliberation at a national conference, I (Juliëtte, a health professions education researcher at a Medical School) sat next to a teacher from a Midwifery School. We started talking about how moral deliberation is an interprofessional affair. We reflected that midwifery and medical students could learn to discuss ethical dilemmas collaboratively. She and I set out to put our ideas into practice, reached out to our institutes, and discussed how we could design and organize interprofessional workshops on moral deliberation for our students.

While attending a workshop on moral deliberation at a national conference, I (Juliëtte, a health professions education researcher at a Medical School) sat next to a teacher from a Midwifery School. We started talking about how moral deliberation is an interprofessional affair. We reflected that midwifery and medical students could learn to discuss ethical dilemmas collaboratively. She and I set out to put our ideas into practice, reached out to our institutes, and discussed how we could design and organize interprofessional workshops on moral deliberation for our students.
Interprofessional education (IPE)-in which students from different professions learn with, from, and about each other-has been acknowledged as a key educational format to prepare health profession students for the interprofessional collaboration that healthcare requires. However, research has shown that one of the main premises underlying IPE, 'just' bringing students from different professions together, is not enough for them to develop competencies to collaborate well in future. 1 Besides being a logistical challenge, IPE development, teaching and research require a shared effort by many stakeholders from different backgrounds, (i.e., healthcare professionals from different disciplines, education experts, teachers and students). Like many other developers, teachers and researchers in IPE, we acknowledge the necessity of this shared effort. However, we also see that our different backgrounds, concerns and interests also challenge IPE design. This dilemma was discussed in a special interest group meeting on IPE at our university and saw connections to a research methodology and a conceptual framework relevant in our work. Inspired by this, we propose two ways in which IPE can be strengthened through collaborative efforts by all IPE stakeholders: (1) by introducing a design-based research approach 2 to create a wider, theory-and practice-informed evidence base for successful IPE and (2) by understanding IPE as working in a landscape of practice. 3 IPE development, teaching and research require a shared effort by many stakeholders from different backgrounds. I Generating a theory-informed evidence base for IPE requires collaboration between those developing, teaching and researching IPE.

Second, IPE design often requires stakeholders from different
Communities of Practice (CoP) to learn how to navigate the IPE Landscape of Practice (LoP), 3 a metaphor for multiple CoP and the boundaries between them. When teachers, designers and researchers collaborate, we encounter different views on IPE (e.g., what we consider appropriate content, methods, and goals). To make these differences work for instead of against IPE, stakeholders need to look further and cross the boundaries of their own CoP into the LoP. 3,5 This requires knowledgeability: the ability to recognise the value of members from different CoPs and one's own to IPE. 3,5 In collaborations between knowledgeable members of the LoP, stakeholders can learn to understand that seemingly competing interests of those developing, teaching and researching IPE will eventually contribute to the same goal: competent future health professionals.
In our discussions about the workshop we were designing, I realized we were not always on the same page. Every professional at the Seemingly competing interests of those developing, teaching and researching IPE will eventually contribute to the same goal.
In the end, successful IPE requires those developing, teaching and researching to value and use insights from each other's respective professions and disciplines, and develop the same interprofessional collaborative competences we require of our students. Using DBR can be an approach to not only bring those involved in IPE closer together but to also strengthen the field of IPE by more effectively engaging in the LoP we all work in. Ultimately, we need to practice what we preach.