Interprofessional Education & Collaborative Practice

The Interprofessional Education & Collaborative Practice was established in 2010 and comprises staff from a number of disciplines including adult, children's, learning disability and mental health nursing, midwifery, occupational therapy, operating department practitioners, osteopathy, paramedic emergency care, physiotherapy and social work. The main focus of research and evaluation is on issues raised by changes in professional practice and practice environments and innovative approaches to interprofessional education, learning and collaborative practice.

Summer 2010 also saw the launch of an interprofessional workshop, which was attended by Brookes staff, local NHS partners and students. We also hold quarterly meetings for researchers, students, lecturers and practitioners who have an interest in the interprofessional education, learning and collaborative practice and who wish to develop research and evaluation in this area.

We have also very close links with Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education (CAIPE).

Research group co-ordinator: Liz Westcott

Current projects include:

• An exploration of indicators for identifying and defining excellence in practice placement within the primary care context.
• Mapping teamwork skills in an interprofessional curriculum - identifying how students learn teamwork (funded by BSLES).

Completed projects:

• Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice October 2010

  This work brought together colleagues from the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences and Westminster Institute of Education with an aim of supporting the construction of an authoritative literature base to examine inter-professional learning and professional collaborative practice in the context of complex multi-professional working in the Health, Social Care, and Education Services.

  The intention was to reinforce a staged construction of an integrated literature review by a series of four seminars which would bring together professionals from the Faculty and Westminster Institute of Education to consider the key challenges and issues of collaborative inter-professional education and practice.