Enhancing interprofessional collaboration by providing more attitude-focused interprofessional education

Effective interprofessional collaboration (IPC) has been shown to contribute to healthcare service quality, efficiency, and patient-centeredness. To achieve these objectives, students of healthcare professions and healthcare professionals (HCPs) participate in interprofessional education (IPE) courses in undergraduate and continuing education, which develops the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes for collaborative practice. Interprofessional collaborative practice depends critically on healthcare professionals’ (HCPs) attitudes toward collaboration, as attitudes are closely linked to actual collaborative behavior, determining, for instance, the extent to which HCPs engage with professionals outside their own profession and invest time and effort in collaboration. In Switzerland, IPE is presently characterized by fragmented provision, the absence of a coordinated curriculum, and a neglect of targeted attitude development. As a result, IPE, as a key element in strengthening IPC, remains underutilized.

In this policy brief, we identify structural challenges and propose measures to improve IPE:

• Publish a national online directory of interprofessional education courses.

We recommend the publication of a national online directory to increase the visibility of interprofessional education courses, serve as a platform for information exchange among institutions as well as make efficient use of existing educational resources.

• Develop a nationally coordinated interprofessional education curriculum.

We propose that a harmonized curriculum would ensure comparable interprofessional competencies across professions and educational levels and further under-score the high relevance of IPC for practice.

• Explicitly integrate attitude development into IPE.

We propose integrating teaching elements into IPE courses that have been shown to contribute to the development of positive attitudes. These include allowing learners to experience how different professions depend on one another and focusing on creating positive interactions and group dynamics in classes.