Interprofessional health education (IPE) occurs when 2 or more professions can learn with, from and about each other, with the overall goal of improving collaboration and the quality of care delivered to patients.
Nearly 4000 students are enrolled at Dalhousie’s faculties of dentistry, medicine and health professions. It is a challenge to educate such a large and diverse group of students on the topic of interprofessionalism and to provide hands-on experience in patient-centred team care. One of the biggest obstacles is trying to integrate the IPE program into the compressed course loads of students, especially when individual students have individual programs of varying lengths.
Dr. Cynthia Andrews is chair of the IPE Steering Committee at Dalhousie. The committee, which includes representatives from the faculties of dentistry, health professions, medicine, science and computer science along with student members, is charged with providing leadership and recommendations to integrate interprofessional education and facilitate culture change within the health professions curricula at Dalhousie.
Dr. Andrews knows that dentists and dental hygienists can play a key role as part of an integrated caregiver team, especially given the number of patients that present with primary pathologies in the head and neck region. “Dentists may not have been part of the traditional health care team in the past. However, there are many cases where oral care experience is crucial in diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation,” says Dr. Andrews. “This is where dentists can and should contribute.”
Dr. Andrews notes that individuals with oral cancers, diabetes, those requiring palliative care, the elderly and other underserviced populations can all benefit from the integration of dentistry within a team care approach.
The concept of establishing IPE as a program at Dalhousie began in the 1980s. For the past decade, the Tri-Faculty Interprofessional Academic Advisory Committee has ensured that almost every student in the 3 health faculties has experienced at least 10 hours of IPE sessions over the course of his or her degree. These sessions include scenario analysis, discussion and role playing with an interprofessional team of student colleagues. Expert panel presentations are also part of the sessions.
One of the goals of the IPE program is to increase the amount of actual interprofessional clinical practice experience that it can offer to each student. “There needs to be a transition from a tabletop scenario of interprofessional education to a clinical, real-life application of patient-centred team practice on a large scale,” adds Dr. Andrews.
A campaign has been launched at Dalhousie to raise capital for the creation of an IPE building. This would be a purpose-built space where students can learn in the classroom, practice in teams on simulated and real cases, and most importantly, interact socially with one another.