Edhayan Class 9 - Inter-professional education
Inter-professional education is effective to handle complex problems that have multiple facets. It is best used by adult learners who are grasping with a real life problem. This form of education is best used in the field and away from the class room. The modality of teaching that needs to be used does not have a fixed construct and needs to be modified depending on the problem being addressed.
Inter-professional education works best when the entire team learns from each other. Each member of the team brings a complementary skill or view of the problem and can be instrumental in the education of the rest of the team.
Going forward, inter-professional education is going to be a bigger part of health care. Medicine is becoming increasingly complex and cost issues can only be tackled by system level changes. These problems can only be surmounted by re-engineering the team and processes.
My experience with inter-professional education was at a retreat to find solutions to increase ICU admissions. The hospital had re-designed the ICU and wanted to increase revenue from the unit while decreasing length of stay. The problem needed cooperation from administrators, nurses and physicians from various specialties.
An outside consultant was brought in to be a facilitator of the session. The education involved team building exercises, market analysis, brain storming and finally setting achievable goals.
The team building exercises were useful in getting to know the rest of the team members and their values. This exercise also established trust. When we did the market analysis and brain stormed all members of the team brought their unique insights and solutions to the problem. It was important for goals to be set by all of us as we could hold each other accountable.
We were successful in increasing revenue for the ICU and cutting down the length of stay. I believe inter-professional education was instrumental to the success of this endeavor. The reason for the success was team building, trust, common purpose, mutual respect and a goal that we could all buy into. I believe that the important reason that this education was successful was because the solutions came from within the team.
The meta-analysis of inter-professional education shows papers having varied results with inter-professional education. The failures were all top down models where the learners could not buy into the process. These methods were doomed at the onset. Inter-professional education is not a one size fits all solution. It is local; the teaching methods have to be modified for the particular situation and works best when the learners themselves come up with the solutions and provide the education. This sort of inter-professional education happens all the time although it is not reported in the literature as it is not easily replicated.