The COVID-19 crisis silver lining: interprofessional education to guide future innovation - Journal of Interprofessional Care

Globally, the advent and rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus has created significant disruption to health profession education and practice, and consequently interprofessional education, leading to a model of learning and practicing where much is unknown. Key questions for this ongoing evolution emerge for the global context leading to reflections on future directions for the interprofessional education field and its role in shaping future practice models. Health profession programs around the world have made a dramatic shift to virtual learning platforms in response to closures of academic institutions and restrictions imposed on learners accessing practice settings. Telemedicine, slow to become established in many countries to date, has also revolutionized practice in the current environment. Within the state of disruption and rapid change is the awareness of a silver lining that provides an opportunity for future growth. Key topics explored in this commentary include: reflection on the application of existing competency frameworks, consideration of typology of team structures, reconsideration of theoretical underpinnings, revisiting of core dimensions of education, adaptation of interprofessional education activities, and the role in future pandemic planning. As an international community of educators and researchers, the authors consider current observations relevant to interprofessional education and practice contexts and suggest a response from scholarship voices across the globe. The current pandemic offers a unique opportunity for educators, practitioners, and researchers to retain what has served interprofessional education and practice well in the past, break from what has not worked as well, and begin to imagine the new. 

Link to article in the Journal of Interprofessional Care: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/NRG9UQJ7FVQQMFJKZ98G/full

For more information, contact author Sylvia Langlois MSc. OT Reg. (On): s.langlois@utoronto.ca

IPR.G Partnership Development Working Group Seeking Two New Members

The IPR Global (IPR.G) Partnership Development Working Group is seeking two new members for this collaborative Working Group preferably from either Australasia, Europe, or Canada to broaden the representation and perspectives brought to the work of this group. This group currently consists of 3 members, two from the United States and one from Jordan. 

The purpose of the IPR.G Partnership Development Working Group is to broadly communicate the ongoing work of a global interprofessional research community where individuals partner and collaborate to discuss, investigate, and disseminate global interprofessional research. Currently, this group has been focusing their efforts on three strategic goals, which include 1) communication, 2) collaboration (connectivity), and 3) partnerships and sponsorships. 

This group also interfaces with and coordinates with a Communication Task Force to implement agreed-upon strategies through the technical expertise of IPR.G members. This Working Group meets monthly for one hour and seeks volunteers interested in serving for a two-year term. 

If you are interested in this volunteer opportunity or learning more about this collaborative Working Group, please feel free to e-mail either Jody Frost or Andrea Pfeifle who co-share leadership of this group.

Jody Frost email: jodygandy@comcast.net

Andrea Pfeifle email: Andrea.Pfeifle@osumc.edu

Webinar on Interprofessional Collaboration and Job Satisfaction in International Sports Science and Sports Medicine

The World Federation of Athletic Training and Therapy (WFATT) is hosting a webinar on Interprofessional Collaboration and Job Satisfaction in International Sports Science and Sports Medicine.  IPR.Global steering committee member Dr. Anthony Breitbach (Saint Louis University, St. Louis, USA) and Dr. Gert Ulrich (Careum Foundation, Zurich Switzerland) will be presenting the results of their survey of over 350 international sports science and sports medicine professionals in Spring 2020.  The survey utilized the University of West England Interprofessional (UWE-IP) Questionnaire and the Warr-Cook-Wall Job Satisfaction (WCW-JS) Questionnaire in addition to several demographic and open ended items.

The webinar take place on Wednesday, September 23, 2020 at 1:00 pm ET/5:00 pm GMT

The webinar is free of charge and open to the public.

Register for the webinar via this link: 

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/5715974177689/WN_rTmLIWyeRLa6_uFLl-7a7g

For more information contact Dr. Breitbach at anthony.breitbach@health.slu.edu.

Interprofessional education and collaborative practice research during the COVID-19 pandemic: Considerations to advance the field - a Journal of Interprofessional Care guest editorial by IPR.Global taskforce

Amid a global pandemic, learners, educators, administrators, researchers, practitioners, and service users find themselves in exceptional, unparalleled, and unusual circumstances. The interprofessional education and collaborative practice (IPECP) research community has been affected in a multitude of ways and vast changes are being experienced leaving one to wonder whether we are alone in a field that espouses unity and if there is guidance available. In late 2019, InterprofessionalResearch.Global (IPR.Global) and Interprofessional.Global (IP.Global) authored a discussion paper to rouse dialogue and offer perspectives for the global IPECP research agenda (Khalili et al., 2019). The long-term aim was to advance IPECP theory and research by 2022, through recommendations for research priorities and counsel on theoretical frameworks, research methodologies, and formation of research teams. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a rapid transformation to online IPECP, necessitating evaluation of the impact on students, programs, service users, and the healthcare system. Understandably, many are now asking how to continue to move forward, or even restart, IPECP research in this “new normal”. In response, IPR.Global formed a COVID-19 taskforce, from which an editorial was developed, to shed light on IPR.Global’s proposed recommendations for research teams and offer ways to forge ahead. 

Access the article at the journal webpage: 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13561820.2020.1807481

For more information contact Dr. Kelly Lackie, Dalhousie University: klackie@dal.ca

Longitudinal Survey on the Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice

IPR Global is pleased to announce the publication of its COVID-19 study protocol entitled “A longitudinal survey on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on interprofessional education and collaborative practice” in the Journal of Interprofessional Care.  The article can be accessed at the journal website: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13561820.2020.1798901

As many countries are experiencing re-opening, the impact of the pandemic on healthcare has been unprecedented. It is widely accepted that healthcare education and practice, including interprofessional education and collaborative practice, has been and will continue to be affected in profound ways. However, the severity and extent of the impact is yet to be determined and is likely to vary internationally. This study is a first in its kind to systematically and globally capture the impact of COVID-19 on interprofessional education and collaborative practice (IPECP) which will allow to identify priorities for IPECP research and development in the years to come, as well as to inform future pandemic preparedness. The data collection is conducted on a quarterly basis for a period of 12 months to capture the rapidly evolving nature of the pandemic and its impact on IPECP. 

IPR Global invites faculty/educators, students, administration, providers, and policy makers to join us in taking this anonymous longitudinal COVID-19 IPECP impact survey at:

https://proxy.qualtrics.com/proxy/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fresearch.interprofessional.global%2Fcovid19-survey%2F&token=IZDEV8UobAvnHTGX33zW8JazVwBfp32vZGEwX2m0AFw%3D

For more information contact Dr. Hossein Khalili at: hkhalili@wisc.edu

Job Announcement - Nebraska Healthcare Collaborative Chair of Population Health

The Nebraska Healthcare Collaborative, in partnership with the University of Nebraska at Kearney, is proud to announce its Nebraska Healthcare Collaborative Chair of Population Health.

The Collaborative is a new organization whose mission is to facilitate cross-sector collaborations of diverse stakeholders optimizing health care delivery through teams that study and propose solutions to improve population health. This position is an endowed position and the individual will work with cross-sector partnerships on exciting population health research. The newly formed Cyber Systems Department at the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK) is seeking applications from highly qualified candidates for a newly created position entitled the Nebraska Healthcare Collaborative Chair of Population Health. The Chair will fulfill an integrative role within the University of Nebraska providing leadership, strategic planning, and advocacy in an effort to advance population health research, interprofessional education, and collaborative practice. 

The position represents a unique partnership with the Nebraska Healthcare Collaborative, a division of Nebraska Health Information Initiative (NEHII), and the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK). The Chair will work directly with the Chief Academic Program Officer of NEHII to establish an annual research agenda for population health, will oversee a budget and have access to a unique, comprehensive dataset designed to support this research agenda, and will serve on the Board of the Nebraska Healthcare Collaborative. It is envisioned that the Chair’s population health research agenda will draw from new approaches in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data visualization aimed at analyzing large scale social, economic, and progressive healthcare data and resulting in translational research and practical solutions to a wide variety of issues related to population health. In general, data science advocacy across many domains is an important part of the position, as the Chair’s leadership will play a critical role in the growth of data science at UNK. 

The Chair will be part of the Cyber Systems Department and will support the data science curriculum for UNK’s College of Business and Technology (CBT). Currently CBT has programs accredited by AACSB, ATMAE, and CIDA, with significant progress toward ABET accreditation as well. 

Apply through this link: https://unk.peopleadmin.com/postings/3439

Applicants can email jdoll@nehii.org for more information.

Learn more about the Nebraska Healthcare Collaborative here: https://nehii.org/about/nebraska-healthcare-collaborative/

Book Chapter - The Resurgence of the Global Research Interprofessional Network

IPR.Global published a chapter, entitled The Resurgence of the Global Research Interprofessional Network in the book Sustainability and Interprofessional Collaboration: Ensuring Leadership Resilience in Collaborative Health Care, It describes the development of the Global Research Interprofessional Network (GRIN) and the In-2-Theory network from its origins. In this chapter, the journey to GRIN and In-2-Theory, the Resurgence of GRIN2Theory, the Drivers of Success, Network Sustainability and Resilience, and the Lessons Learned are discussed. Similar to other IPECP networks, sustainability remains a high priority for IPR.Global. It is therefore imperative that IPR.Global be innovative and offer something unique and of value. Lessons learned from our experience and from our scoping review on collaborative networks indicate that key factors for a sustainable interprofessional collaboration need to include a committed membership, the maintenance of dialogue, ensuring clarity, respecting diversity, and engagement in process/contextual factors. Relevance, buy-in and social capital for members are key principles for ensuring a sustainable network. IPR.Global will remain focused on global leadership in IPECP Research, as our practice, and will continue to promote and advocate for evidence-informed policies and practices. We foster and facilitate theory-driven, methodologically rigorous IPECP research to achieve better health, better care, better value and better work experience for all. 

Link to book web-page: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-40281-5

For more information contact chapter author Dr. Hossein Khalili: hkhalili@wisc.edu