Professional status and interprofessional collaboration: A view of massage therapy

Fascinating article that examines massage therapy and professional status and interprofessional collaboration. Written by Cathy Fournier (Department of Health Studies, University of Toronto, 

Toronto, Ontario

, Canada; Department of Psychiatry, Wilson Centre for Research in Medical Education, University of Toronto, 

Toronto, Ontario

, Canada), Scott Reeves ( Director, Center for Innovation in Interprofessional Healthcare Education,University of California, San Francisco).

Massage therapy is one of the fastest growing complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) modalities in North America. Massage therapy has been regulated under the Regulated Health Professions Act (RHPA) in Ontario, Canada since 1994. The RHPA governs physicians, nurses and midwives, among other health care professionals. There

is a growing body of evidence for the efficacy of massage therapy for a number of conditions considered a burden for patients and the health care system, such as musculoskeletal

pain, discomforts of cancer treatment, depression and anxiety (Moyer, Rounds, & Hannum, 2004; Sturgeon, Wetta-Hall, Hart, Good, & Dakhil, 2009). Patient/public demand has contributed to CAM modalities, including massage therapy, being made available to patients on a fee for service basis within hospital and other medical settings (e.g. Soklaridis, Kelner, Love, & Cassidy, 2009). Despite the developing evidence for the role of massage therapy in health care and patient/public demand for this service, it remains on the periphery of mainstream health care. The peripheral role of massage therapy is apparent by questions about its legitimacy, and its absence in discussions of interprofessional collaboration, in health care. While regulation is commonly associated with a move towards professionalization and improvements in the status of health care professionals (Finch, 2009), these issues in relation to massage therapy continue to be a challenge. A small number of studies have recently examined CAM in relation to interprofessional collaboration, yet massage therapy was not the main focus (Gaboury, Bujold, Boon, & Moher, 2009; Soklaridis et al., 2009). The purpose of this study was to explore perceptions of the professionalization

and status of massage therapists, and the implications for interprofessional collaboration.

For more information, please see the Journal of Interprofessional Care January 2012, Vol. 26, No. 1 , Pages 71-72.

Collaboration: What is it like? – Phenomenological interpretation of the experience of collaborating within rehabilitation teams

Great article by: Croker, Trede, & Higgs (The Education For Practice Institute, Charles Sturt University, 

Sydney

, Australia)

Although a core component of many current health-care directions, interprofessional collaboration continues to challenge educators and health professionals. This paper aims to inform the development of collaborative practice by illuminating the experiences of collaborating within rehabilitation teams. The researchers focused on experiences that transcended team members' professional role categorizations in order to bring individuals and their lived experiences to the forefront. An inclusive view of “teams” and “collaboration” was adopted and the complexity and multifaceted nature of collaborating were explored through a hermeneutic phenomenological approach. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather data about experiences of collaborating in nine rehabilitation teams. Sixty-six team members across nine teams were interviewed. Eight interdependent dimensions, core to the experience of collaborating, emerged from the analysis of the data. Five dimensions expressed interpersonal dimensions of endeavor: engaging positively with other peoples' diversity; entering into the form and feel of the team; establishing ways of communicating and working together; envisioning together frameworks for patients' rehabilitation and effecting changes in people and situations. Three reviewing dimensions, reflexivity, reciprocity and responsiveness, operated across the endeavor dimensions. By identifying meaning structures of the experience of collaborating, this study highlights the importance of seeing beyond team members' professional affiliations and being aware of their contextualized interpersonal and activity-related collaborating capabilities.

For more information, please read the Journal of Interprofessional Care January 2012, Vol. 26, No. 1 , Pages 13-20.

Changes in attitudes toward interprofessional health care teams and education in the first- and third-year undergraduate students

Great article written by: Tomoko Hayashi, Hiromitsu Shinozaki, Takatoshi Makino, Hatsue Ogawara, Yasuyoshi Asakawa, Kiyotaka Iwasaki, Tamiko Matsuda, Yumiko Abe, Fusae Tozato, Misako Koizumi, Takako Yasukawa, Bumsuk Lee, Kunihiko Hayashi, and Hideomi Watanabe. (Gunma University, Japan)


The interprofessional education (IPE) program at Gunma University, Maebashi, Japan, implements a lecture style for the first-year students and a training style for the third-year students. Changes in the scores of modified Attitudes Toward Health Care Teams Scale (ATHCTS) and those of modified Readiness of health care students for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS) at the beginning and the end of the term were evaluated in the 2008 academic year. Two hundred and eighty-five respondents of a possible 364 completed the survey. In both the scales, the overall mean scores declined significantly after the lecture-style learning in the first-year students, while the scores improved significantly after the training-style learning in the third-year students. Exploratory factor analysis revealed that the modified ATHCTS was composed of three subscales, and the modified RIPLS two subscales. Analyses using regression factor scores revealed that the scores of “quality of care delivery” subscale in the modified ATHCTS and those of “expertise” subscale in the modified RIPLS declined significantly in the first-year students. Consequently, IPE programs may be introduced early in the undergraduate curriculum to prevent stereotyped perceptions for IPE, and comprehensive IPE curricula may result in profound changes in attitudes among participating students.
For more information, please read the Journal of Interprofessional Care (Early Online)

Welcome 2012!

Looking back, 2011 has been another successful year for Journal of Interprofessional Care (JIC). This success is expressed in a number of different ways. The editorial office has continued to receive an increasing number of submissions over the past 12 months. Last year, the editorial team processed over 250 articles, editorials, commentaries, reports and reviews. The quality of the submissions has continued to increase, indicating that the academic work of our colleagues in the interprofessional field strives forward. For example, we have seen an expansion of methodological papers that outline innovative approaches by which we can build more robust empirical work. Also, our current call for papers on theoretical perspectives (due to be published later this year) has yielded nearly 20 potential contributions, with a range of stimulating ideas for using social science theories to illuminate and better understand the interprofessional domain.

Importantly, in 2011, JIC was awarded its first impact factor (0.793) from Thomson Reuters. Securing an impact factor provides an indication of the value of a journal in its academic domain, and is therefore a cause for celebration among editorial team and board members, authors, peer reviewers and our publisher – Informa. However, as the first JIC editorial of 2012 points out, while it is important to recognize the opportunities an impact factor offers an academic journal (e.g. increased attraction for authors), one also needs to understand the limitations of the methods used to calculate an impact factor (Reeves, Kenaszcuk, Sawatzky-Girling & Goldman 2012).

In 2011, we have also strengthened our editorial team by a number of new appointments whose talents will further enhance the quality of our editorial work. I am delighted to announce that we have four new associate editors – Julia Coyle (University of New South Wales, Australia), Craig Kuziemsky (University of Ottawa, Canada), Angus McFadyen (AKM-STATS, Glasgow, UK), Flemming Jakobsen (Regional Hospital Holstebro, Denmark); a new co-editor for the short reports section – Tina Martimianakis (University of Toronto, Canada) and a new co-editor of our reviews section – Tyler Law (McMaster University, Canada).

Encouragingly, the Journal's social media sites continue to have a widening presence on the Internet. For example, the JIC Twitter account now has over 400 followers, while the JIC Facebook account has nearly 100 members. Earlier this year, the Journal launched its own YouTube Channel and Blog, and posted a number of podcasts on its main website. Collectively, these different forms of social media provide additional insights and information which aim to complement the Journal's conceptual, empirical and theoretical papers and reports, editorials, commentaries and reviews.

Personally, this year has been one of change. After 6 years at the University of Toronto, I moved to the University of California, San Francisco, to begin an exciting new role as the Founding Director for the Center for Innovation in Interprofessional Healthcare Education. This new post allows me to extend my increasing interest in leading interprofessional initiatives while continuing my research and editorial work. As a result of this move, the editorial office is now more virtual in nature, spanning both San Francisco and Toronto, as Joanne Goldman continues her invaluable work as JIC Managing Editor based in Toronto. This means that the editorial office work is now undertaken by use of various information technologies, similar to many journals that have online submission systems like JIC.

Looking into 2012, our aim is to continue to build upon these successes: strengthen the quality of JIC papers through robust editorial work, work to increase our impact factor and extend our Internet presence by continued use of different social media applications. Once again, I would like to thank all the members of our editorial team and editorial board, whose hard work and contributions ensure the continued success of Journal of Interprofessional Care.

Thank you,Scott Reeves (Editor-in-Chief)


For more information, please see the Journal of Interprofessional Care: http://informahealthcare.com/journal/jic

A cross-institutional examination of readiness for interprofessional learning

Happy New Year from everyone at the Journal of Interprofessional Care!

Great article exploring a cross-institutional examination of readiness for interprofessional learning. 
Written by: Sharla King (Health Sciences Education and Research Commons, University of Alberta, 

Edmonton, AB

, Canada, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta, 

Edmonton, AB

, Canada), Elaine Greidanus (Health Sciences Education and Research Commons, University of Alberta, 

Edmonton, AB

, Canada), Rochelle Major (Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta, 

Edmonton, AB

, Canada), Tatiana Loverso (Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta, 

Edmonton, AB

, Canada), Alan Knowles (Department of Social Work, MacEwan University, Edmonton, 

Alberta

, Canada), Mike Carbonaro (Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta, 

Edmonton, AB

, Canada), Louise Bahry (Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta, 

Edmonton, AB

, Canada).

This paper examines the readiness for and attitudes toward interprofessional (IP) education in students across four diverse educational institutions with different educational mandates. The four educational institutions (research-intensive university, baccalaureate, polytechnical institute and community college) partnered to develop, deliver and evaluate IP modules in simulation learning environments. As one of the first steps in planning, the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale was delivered to 1530 students from across the institutions. A confirmatory factor analysis was used to expand upon previous work to examine psychometric properties of the instrument. An analysis of variance revealed significant differences among the institutions; however, a closer examination of the means demonstrated little variability. In an environment where collaboration and development of learning experiences across educational institutions is an expectation of the provincial government, an understanding of differences among a cohort of students is critical. This study reveals nonmeaningful significant differences, indicating different institutional educational mandates are unlikely to be an obstacle in the development of cross-institutional IP curricula.

For more information, please read the Journal of Interprofessional Care, Early Online: http://informahealthcare.com/toc/jic/0/0