Interprofessional education (IPE) experience in healthcare bachelor curricula in Switzerland: what is the news?

Background: IPE is becoming increasingly important internationally. The World Health Organization recognizes IPE as strategy that promotes collaboration and teamwork among groups of professionals. Although there are health... [ view full abstract ]

Background:
IPE is becoming increasingly important internationally. The World Health Organization recognizes IPE as strategy that promotes collaboration and teamwork among groups of professionals. Although there are health professionals working alongside one another in practice, each offering their distinct contribution, this can serve as reporting mechanism only rather than being truly interprofessional, that is using effective communication and teamwork to address patient care issues and improve outcomes. By learning to work together at an early stage during bachelor, practitioners learn key skills for working effectively in practice. While there is discussion about this topic within the literature, there is little reported evidence on it from Switzerland.

Aim and objectives:
This paper reports on one such innovation piloted in bachelor courses in nursing, physiotherapy and occupational therapist in Switzerland: some contents, organization, some results obtained by the follow up.

Description of innovation:

The big innovation is the introduction of IPE curriculum in Bachelor level. Therefore each curricula is organized in mono-professional modules for specific competencies (80 ECTS) and 17 interprofessional modules (52 ECTS) common in all three bachelor courses and distribuited along the three-years programms. The number of students admitted every year is: 100 nurses-30 physiotherapists-15 occupational therapists. Interprofessional modules develop topics of common interest: epistemology of care, identity and alterity in professional practice etc. A meaningful example is the module “Interprofessional management of complex situations” that encourages the interdisciplinary collaboration using learning methods like eg. dynamic group, "in group" writing, intercultural approach.

Impact of innovation
Decrease the lack of alignment between education and practice, increase the basis for an interprofessional collaborative practice. One year after the diploma we measured the outcomes using a satisfaction questionnaires to the structures employing our students and to ex-student.

Conclusions
The follow up shows the appreciation by structures(S) and professionals(P) for:
- Interprofessional collaboration evaluated 5(S) 6(P) scale 1-7
- Work in team evaluated 6(S) 7(P).
It confirms the collaborative working abilities and attitudes to interdisciplinary work acquired during the course.
Therefore we agreed that it is important to maintain IPE curriculum in the bachelor courses to obtain the objectives defined by the International organizations.