Developing Interprofessional Education in health and social care ...

2. Promoting Interprofessional EducationThe progress made in promoting and developing IPE would have been impossiblehad it not been for favourable trends in higher, vocational and professionaleducation, which had been gathering pace over many years. Time, energy andmoney were being invested to improve teaching and learning. Outcome ledrequirements were freeing up curricula. Multidisciplinary research was paving theway for multiprofessional teaching and learning. Liberalisation of knowledge wasbeing driven by arguments for open access, open learning and electronic publishing.Broader-based university courses were enlarging market share as they attractedstudents from a spectrum of disciplines made easier by modularisation, while workbasedlearning became an increasingly important and growing element inundergraduate education. Many and varied opportunities resulted to introduceinterprofessional learning.The Labour government put education and training at the heart of its workforcestrategy for health and social care (Secretary of State for Health, 1997). Theemphasis at first was on continuing professional development to reconcile twoobjectives: the legitimate aspirations of individual health professionals; and theneeds and expectations of services and patients. Lifelong learning would attract,motivate and retain high calibre professionals, managers and other health careworkers in an increasingly competitive labour market. Higher education providersand local education consortia (succeeded by Workforce DevelopmentConfederations and later incorporated into Strategic Health Authorities) would beresponsible for devising innovative approaches to work-based learning (Departmentof Health, 1998a). The Chief Medical Officer for England proposed “practiceprofessional development planning” (PPDP) in primary care, taking into accountuniprofessional and multiprofessional learning needs to encourage team working,adaptability of professional roles (where appropriate) and whole practicedevelopment as a human resource for health care (Department of Health, 1998b).These proposals went with the grain for IPE activists, reinforcing their establishedemphasis on work-based interprofessional continuing development and balancingthe needs of the worker and the organisation.Why the emphasis switched so abruptly to pre-registration interprofessional studiesfrom 2000 onwards is unclear. Post-registration and work-based interprofessionallearning continued, but cast in the shadows by the government-led drive to promotepre-registration “common learning”. The NHS Plan stressed the importance ofcollaboration between the NHS, higher education providers and regulatory bodies tomake basic training more flexible, grounded in a core curriculum for commonfoundation programmes to promote partnership at all levels and to ensure aseamless service of patient centred care including communications skills and NHSprinciples and organisation. Those programmes, it was envisaged, would promote:teamwork; partnership and collaboration between professions, betweenorganisations and with patients; skill mix and flexible working between professions;opportunities to switch training pathways to expedite career progression; and newtypes of workers (Secretary of State for Health, 2000). The reforms would give frontlinestaff the opportunity to think and work differently to solve old problems in newways to deliver the improvements set out in the Plan (Department of Health 2001b).11