出版社：Japanese Association of Occupational Therapists
摘要：Teamwork in health care settings is assumed to be beneficial for the client since it allows for a more holistic, comprehensive, co-ordinated approach. It is essential, therefore, for team members to have an adequate knowledge of, and respect for one another's professions. Traditionally, the different health care professions know little about each others specific skill-set and their roles as health care practitioners, whereas in interprofessional education (IPE), clinicians and/or students become familiar with the knowledge, skills and attitudes of each other to be effective team members. Changes in the current health care environment require well-versed, flexible, collaborative clinicians who work for the client's best interests. Traditional professional silos are no longer viable. IPE both at the undergraduate/pre-employment level and postgraduate/post-employment level is seen as one means to foster effective cross-professional communication, collaboration and client-centred care. IPE assists students to increase their knowledge of the roles and functions of other related professionals and enable an integrated approach to both in the workplace and in collaborative practice. Given that IPE is resource intensive, a question that can be posed is "how effective is IPE?" Many evaluation studies examining the effectiveness of IPE in health care contexts (mainly with physicians and nurses) have been completed. Only a few investigations have included other health professions such as occupational therapy, pharmacy, social work or physiotherapy. All of the IPE effectiveness studies report some form of positive benefit or outcome, but none of the studies are definitive or have been replicated. Many of the published health science IPE evaluation studies lack adequate rigor in terms of poor or unclear research design used, small sample size, non-randomisation of participants, lack of comparison control group, lack of acknowledgement of bias, non-standardised instruments used and/or statistical analyses completed. Several systematic reviews have been completed dealing with the published health science IPE evaluation literature, but the results have been largely inconclusive. Ongoing evaluation of the effectiveness of IPE in the health sciences is required.
