Thirty years and counting: The downs and ups of IPECP

I am Dr. Jill Thistlethwaite, an interprofessional champion and academic, retired from being a family physician but still involved in health professional education through mentoring, writing and presenting, working in Australia but born in the UK.

I became involved with IPE while a general practice educator as we introduced joint education sessions for GP trainees and practice nurses in the 1990s in the north of England, though we did not call this IPE then! In 1996 I moved into academia and met Hugh Barr, one of the principal proponents of IPECP globally - he invited me to be an associate editor for the Journal of Interprofessional Care.  I was also involved in setting up IPE activities for a mix of HP students and recently graduated HPs. 

Over the years I have seen IPECP promoted, forgotten, sidelined and embedded in various places but with an ongoing commitment of the IPECP community to collaboration and improving healthcare delivery, social justice and inclusion.  There is much work to be done as healthcare is subject to political forces and, unfortunately, tribalism still exists amongst HPs in some jurisdictions.  

My achievements in IPECP have been realised through collaborating with a network of colleagues - nothing can be accomplished alone.  I am proud of my publishing record, the nurturing of younger colleagues to write and publish, global presentations to help others develop IPE and my senior Fulbright time at the National Centre for Interprofessional Practice and Education in Minnesota. 

IPR.Global is a global community of practice, that supports and motivates the development and dissemination of IPECP initiatives and research/evaluation concepts and projects.  It is a network of friend and colleagues with similar perspectives and ambitions from diverse backgrounds and cultures. 

@Jill Thistlethwaite

IPR.Global Members Publish Editorial Advocating for a Systems Approach to Advancing Health Care Resilience

 Guest Editorial - Journal of Interprofessional Care

Advancing health care resilience through a systems-based collaborative approach: Lessons learned from COVID-19

Hossein Khalili, Dean Lising, Giray Kolcu, Jill Thistlethwaite, John Gilbert, Sylvia Langlois, Barbara Maxwell, Mukadder İnci Başer Kolcu, Kathleen M. MacMillan, Carl Schneider, José Rodrigues Freire Filho, Ghaidaa Najjar, Zaid Al-Hamdan & Andrea Pfeifle 

The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded everyone of the importance of long-term planning and preparedness. Effective pandemic preparedness requires the engagement of all stakeholders from across the spectrum of care while being aware of the strengths, susceptibilities, and capabilities of the health care system. Identifying gaps in preparedness, determining specific priorities, and developing plans for building and sustaining healthcare delivery while effectively addressing the pandemic and resilience at all levels from the individual, to team, organization, and system is crucial for success. There is an emergent need to build structures and processes that support resilience among current and future healthcare providers, teams, organizations, and systems. We believe that to prevent from and effectively address such crises in future, a systems-based collaborative approach to developing resilience is required. In response, InterprofessionalResearch.Global (IPR.Global) has recently published a Call to Action paper that provides key direction regarding interprofessional responses to address individual resilience, and support the resilience of healthcare teams, organizations, and systems.

Link to full text of article: 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13561820.2021.1981265

Link to IPR.Global "Call to Action": 

https://interprofessionalresearch.global/resilience-call-to-action/

IPR.Global Scholar Spotlight - Dr. Jill Thistlethwaite, NSW Health and University of Technology (Sydney, Australia)

Hi. I'm Jill Thistlethwaite originally from Manchester in the north of England; now living in Australia 300km north of Sydney.  I work with the Health Education and Training Institute (HETI) of NSW Health and am an adjunct professor at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). I was the editor-in-chief of The Clinical Teacher until December 2020.  One of my passions is writing and I have published books, book chapters and articles on IPE over the last twenty-five years including Values-based interprofessional collaborative practice (2012) and a series of four edited books with Dawn Forman (UK) and Marion Jones (New Zealand) focusing on leadership in IPE with chapters from authors around the globe.  

I trained as a general practitioner (family doctor) in England and worked full-time in a semi-rural practice there for 10 years. My involvement with medical education began in general practice as a GP trainer and postgraduate GP program organiser. In the early 1990s we developed some sessions for GP registrars and practice nurses, which was my 1st experience of IPE. In 1996 I became a senior lecturer in medical education and general practice at Leeds University and was invited by Prof Hugh Barr to become an associate editor for the Journal of Interprofessional Care a few years later.  

In partnership with colleagues, I have developed IPE at several universities in the UK and Australia. I was a founder member of AIPPEN (the Australasian Interprofessional Practice and Education Network).   A team I led with academics from Australia, the UK and Canada received an Australian grant in 2012 to develop a teamwork assessment instrument, iTOFT: the individual teamwork and observation feedback tool.   

I am most proud of being a Fulbright senior scholar at the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education in Minneapolis in 2014 and being invited to speak at the Institute of Medicine in Washington DC on ‘what is evidence in relation to IPE?’ I have also had the honour to be an invited speaker and facilitator in many countries including Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, Canada, Germany, Switzerland and Malaysia.  

IPR.Global to me is a community of practice of which I have been a member since 2012. We need high quality research and evaluation to explore the impact of IPE and collaborative practice, and what works for whom and in what contexts.  

Find me on Twitter @jthistlethwaite 

I do sometimes homebake pizza and would never add pineapple. 

Interprofessional Research.Global Scholar Spotlight is a regular feature that highlights member research in Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice.  

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