The design of an interprofessional objective structured clinical examination (iOSCE) approach

Developing an iOSCE presents unique challenges. For example, there is a need to balance the inclusiveness of participating professions in each scenario with realism, and the need to ensure that learners have opportunities to demonstrate their different interprofessional skills within scenarios. Nevertheless, this initial work has helped to ensure that the perspectives of the professions involved in the IPE curriculum were captured in a fair and equitable manner. In addition, we found that the modified Delphi process was an effective tool to obtain consensus amongst the professions for the foundational work required for this study. The next steps in this study involve two full-day writing workshops to develop the top five topic themes into clinical scenarios for use in the iOSCE that could accommodate any 5 of the 10 health professions at the study site. Participants will work in small, interprofessional groups led by a facilitator to accomplish this task. An iterative process of scenario review, refinement, pilot testing and evaluation for validity and reliability will be used to address challenges, with the help of clinical subject matter and OSCE experts, confederates (trained actors to role play scenarios), and student volunteers. Finally, a series of focus groups will be held with purposefully selected faculty, students, and standardized patients involved in this process to evaluate their experiences in the development of the iOSCE.

Scott Reeves (Editor-in-Chief)

For more information read: Journal of Interprofessional Care (January 2011), 25 (1), pg. 73-74.

The role of nurse practitioners in hospital settings: implications for interprofessional practice

Expansion of the nurse practitioner (NP) role worldwide indicates a need to understand how the role functions in interprofessional healthcare teams. Through the adoption of a mixed methods approach that gathered on-site tracking and observation, self-recorded logs of consultations and focus group interviews of team members and NPs, we describe the extent of role activity and the nature of interprofessional practices of 46 NPs and their team members in nine hospital sites across the province of Ontario, Canada. Findings outline the nature of the NP role activities, which largely focused on providing clinical care, with the support of their team, to a range of patients across the study settings. We discuss how ‘‘embedding’’ the NP in this way appears to contribute to utilization of expertise of all professions as well as enabling team members to promote evidence-based practices. We argue that the use of NPs augments interprofessional role utilization through their desire to consult with a range of professionals and the capacity to perform holistic care for patients that is not limited to traditional nursing boundaries.

(Scott Reeves, Editor-in-Chief)

For more information read: Mary Van Soeren; Christina Hurlock-Chorostecki; Scott Reeves

Journal of Interprofessional Care (July 2011), 25 (4), pg. 245-251.

A scoping review to improve conceptual clarity of interprofessional interventions

Interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional collaboration (IPC) have been identified in health education and health care as playing an important role in improving health care services and patient outcomes. Despite a growth in the amount of research in these areas, poor conceptualizations of these interprofessional activities have persisted. Given the conceptual challenges, a scoping review of the interprofessional field was undertaken to map the literature available in order to identify key concepts, theories and sources of evidence. The objective of this review was to develop a theoretically based and empirically tested understanding of IPE and IPC. A total of 104 studies met the criteria and were included for analysis. Studies were examined for their approach to conceptualization, implementation, and assessment of their interprofessional interventions. Half of the studies were used for interprofessional framework development and half for framework testing and refinement. The final framework contains three main types of interprofessional interventions: IPE; interprofessional practice; and interprofessional organization; and describes the nature of each type of intervention by stage, participants, intervention type, interprofessional objectives, and outcomes. The outcomes are delineated as intermediate, patient, and system outcomes. There was very limited use of theory in the studies, and thus theoretical aspects could not be incorporated into the framework. This study offers an initial step in mapping out the interprofessional field and outlines possible ways forward for future research and practice.

(Scott Reeves, Editor-in-Chief)

For more information read: Scott Reeves; Joanne Goldman; John Gilbert; Joshua Tepper; Ivan Silver; Esther Suter; Merrick Zwarenstein

Journal of Interprofessional Care (May 2011), 25 (3), pg. 167-174.