Summary: Interprofessional Education and Practice Guide No. 3: Evaluating interprofessional education

There has been an ongoing increase in the publication of evaluation work aimed at measuring the processes and outcomes related to a range of interprofessional education (IPE) activities and initiatives. Systematic reviews of IPE have, however, suggested that while the quality of evaluation studies is improving, there continues to be a number of empirical weaknesses with this work.

In an effort to enhance the quality of IPE evaluation studies, Reeves and colleagues have produced a short guide providing a series of ideas and suggestions about how to undertake a robust evaluation of an IPE event. The guide presents a series of key lessons for colleagues to help them undertake a good quality IPE evaluation, covering a range of methodological, practical and ethical issues. These include: the formation of evaluation questions, use of evaluation models and theoretical perspectives, advice about the selection of qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods evaluation designs, managing evaluation resources, and ideas about disseminating evaluation results to the broader IPE community.

It is anticipated that this guide will assist IPE colleagues in undertaking high-quality evaluation in order to provide valuable evidence for different stakeholders, and also help inform the scholarly knowledge for the interprofessional field.

Read More: http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/13561820.2014.1003637

An ethnographic investigation of junior doctors’ capacities to practice interprofessionally in three teaching hospitals

Collaborative practice among early career staff is at the bedrock of interprofessional care. Milne, Greenfield and Braithwaite investigated factors influencing the enactment of interprofessional practice in a recent study using the day-to-day role of six junior doctors in three teaching hospitals as a gateway to understand the various professions’ interactive behaviours. The contextual framework used for the study was Strauss’ theory of negotiated order. Ethnographic techniques were applied to observe the actions and interactions of participants on typical working days in their hospital environments. Field notes were created and thematic analysis was applied to the data. Three themes explored were culture, communication, and collaboration. 

Issues identified highlight the bounded organisational and professional cultures within which junior doctors work, and systemic problems in interprofessional interaction and communication in the wards of hospitals. There are indications that early career doctors are interprofessional isolates. The constraints of short training terms and pressure from multi-faceted demands on junior doctors can interfere with the establishment of meaningful relationships with nurses and other health professionals.

The realisation of sustained interprofessional practice is, therefore, practically and structurally difficult. Enabling factors supporting the sharing of expertise are outweighed by barriers associated with professional and hospital organisational cultures, poor interprofessional communication, and the pressure of competing individual task demands in the course of daily practice.

Read More: http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/13561820.2015.1004039