Interprofessional Education/Collaboration and Primary Healthcare

Interprofessional Education

• Occurs when two or more professions learn about, from and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes
• Develop knowledge, skills and attitudes that result in interprofessional team behaviors and competence

Patterns and Challenges in the Strategic Management of the PH Workforce

1. Workforce structure
2. "Steering of the workforce"
3. Drivers of workforce behavior
4. Approaches to improving performance

"Steering" of the workforce

• "Information systems relating to the workforce are typically sketchy"
• "Decentralization can result in fragmentation"

Drivers of workforce behavior

• Emphasis on a broad range of factors that affect worker motivation
• Health workers are often unprepared to take on their new functions in more complex systems
• "When the health sector is severely under resourced, it is difficult to hold people accountable for how they do their jobs."

Approaches to improving performance

• Attributes of high-performing facilities and personnel
• Decentralization is no panacea for the health sector
• Competition has the risk of undermining core public health functions and values

Interprofessional Education consists of:

1. present and future health workforce
2. interprofessional education
3. collaborative practice-ready workforce
4. collaborative practice
5. optimal health services

Core Competencies (IPEC, 2010)

1. Teams and teamwork
2. values or ethics for interprofessional practice
3. roles and responsibilities
4. interprofessional communication

Interprofessional Collaboration consists of

1. Systemic
2. Organizational
3. Interactional

Systemic Interprofessional Collaboration

• Social
• Cultural
• Educational
• Professional

Organizational Interprofessional Collaboration

• Philosophy and structure
• Administrative support
• Resource
• Coordination mechanisms

Interactional Interprofessional Collaboration

• Willingness to collaborate
• Trust and mutual respect
• Communication

Workforce structure

• "Imbalance in the structure is both a cause and symptom of poor health system performance"