Interprofessional Relationships for Work-Integrated Learning in Healthcare: Identifying Scope for Ongoing Professional Development

Abstract

Interprofessional collaboration is an important aspect of delivering healthcare. However, helping students learn to work with other health professions continues to pose challenges. Students’ interprofessional relationships are an important aspect of learning to work with other professions. The complexity of educators’ interprofessional relationships is less easily recognised. Existing relationships between educators were the intentional foundation underpinning the development and implementation of a recent interprofessional workplace learning initiative over 18 months involving undergraduate students from speech pathology (n = 12) and nutrition and dietetics (n = 18) programs. As part of a larger collaborative inquiry, educators involved in the initiative explored the nature of interprofessional relationships involved in developing, delivering and participating in the initiative. The aim was to develop a deeper understanding of such interprofessional relationships in order to provide guidance for ongoing development of students’ and educators’ collaborative practice. Transcripts of five focus groups undertaken with students (n = 5), academic educators (n = 4) and clinical educators (n = 4) were compiled into a text set and interpreted using tools of philosophical hermeneutics. Findings of this study were iteratively dialogued with earlier findings of the collaborative dialogical inquiry to ensure “fusion of horizons” between studies. The three interpreted themes transcended professional affiliations: facilitating interprofessional mutuality, appreciating the multifaceted nature of “respect” and considering the visibility of interprofessional relationships. The themes highlighted the importance of educators’ ongoing development and understanding of interprofessional relationships as they help students learn to work with other professions. Based on a practice-based education framework, we pose reflective questions for educators to inform their ongoing development. We conclude that it is important for all those involved in healthcare education to embrace the responsibility of developing interprofessional relationships in an ongoing manner and not view the development of interprofessional relationships solely as the domain of students.