Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC): Shaping the Future of Healthcare

Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) is a crucial initiative aimed at fostering collaboration and improving health outcomes through education. This article explores the IPEC's framework, competencies, and impact on healthcare education and practice.

What is Interprofessional Education?

Interprofessional education (IPE) is an approach where "two or more professions learn about, from and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes." It is a method of educating professionals together to obtain a common goal. This approach recognizes that healthcare delivery is increasingly team-based and collaborative, requiring learning opportunities that cultivate the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values necessary for effective teamwork. Interprofessional Education (IPE) of healthcare professionals is aimed to be a precursor for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (IPCP). It is obvious that when students from diverse health professions learn and train together, they will be better equipped to work together.

The Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC)

The Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) is a non-profit organization formed in 2009 through collaboration between six national education associations of schools of the health professions. IPEC was created “to promote and encourage constituent efforts that would advance substantive interprofessional learning experiences to help prepare future health professionals for enhanced team-based care of patients and improved population health outcomes.” Since that time, IPEC membership has grown to 21 associations, including the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association.

IPEC Core Competencies

The IPEC articulated competencies in 2011 which was subsequently updated in 2016.5 The 2011 document was a joint effort of American Association of Colleges of Nursing, American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, American Dental Education Association, Association of American Medical Colleges, and Association of Schools of Public Health. The 2016 document had representation from nine other professional bodies namely American Association of Colleges of Podiatric Medicine, American Council of Academic Physical Therapy, American Occupational Therapy Association, American Psychological Association, Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges, Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry, Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions, Council on Social Work Education and Physician Assistant Education Association. As a guide for curricula development in professional schools, the IPEC panel first developed a set of core competencies for Interprofessional Education (IPE) and Interprofessional Practice (IPP) in 2011.

The IPE initiative at UIC utilizes the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice as one of several frameworks for curriculum development. The most recent version of the IPEC Core Competencies was completed in November 2023 as a project of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative, Washington, D.C. The newest version, IPEC Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (ICP): Version 3 includes 33 competency statements with a strong emphasis on respecting discipline-specific expertise and contributions to care, engaging in shared leadership, addressing the social determinants of health, and advancing social justice, cultural humility, and health equity.

The competencies were developed with interprofessional collaboration as the centrepiece. Values and ethics, roles, and responsibilities, interprofessional communication, and teams and teamwork are the four key competencies outlined. Fig. 1 depicts how the competencies are an integral part of interprofessional collaboration and ensures that patient and family centered care is provided keeping in mind the needs of the community and population.6 By the very nature, all four competencies require collaboration. However, the one competency that makes collaboration imperative is the competency on teams and teamwork. This is listed as the fourth competency and is stated as “applying relationship-building values and the principles of team dynamics to perform effectively in different team roles to plan, deliver, and evaluate patient/population-centered care and population health programs and policies that are safe, timely, efficient, effective, and equitable.” The competency on teams and teamwork has eleven sub-competencies and they cover the entire spectrum from team development to performing effectively in teams.

Key Competency Areas

In each of the general competency areas, sub-competencies were developed and available in the document, IPEC Core Competencies for Collaborative Practice, 2016 Updates. The core competencies emphasize several critical areas:

Values and Ethics: Work with individuals of other professions to maintain a climate of mutual respect and shared values.
Roles and Responsibilities: Use the knowledge of one's own role and those other professions to appropriately assess and address the health care needs of patients and to promote and advance the health of populations.
Interprofessional Communication: Communicate with patients, families, communities, and professionals in health and other fields in a responsive and responsible manner that supports a team approach to the promotion and maintenance of health and the prevention and treatment of disease.
Teams and Teamwork: Apply relationship-building values and the principles of team dynamics to perform effectively in different team roles to plan, deliver, and evaluate patient/population-centered care and population health programs and policies that are safe, timely, efficient, effective, and equitable.

Integrating IPEC Competencies into Curricula

Examples for integrating core competencies of interprofessional education and collaborative practice are witnessed in many other health professions curricula. No curriculum effectively captures the interdependence between health professions’ education competency development for collaborative practice and practice needs, like the nursing does. According to the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) initiative, team work and collaboration are core pre-licensure competencies that nursing students should accomplish.10 Therefore, integrating interprofessional education has been identified as a key factor in transforming nursing education.

The interprofessional learning experiences are conventionally assigned to the categories of exposure, immersion, and mastery as a continuum of interprofessional education and practice.13 The exposure phase is primarily preparatory in its organization and intended for learners to come together with students who represent other health professions. Exposure phase helps in positioning the foundation for future partnerships. This phase employs common orientation programs, small groups discussions and social activities that foster the spirit of interprofessionalism. The interactions during exposure will set the stage for next phase, the immersion period which warrants collaborative interactions that help learners focus on learning with, from and about each other's profession. Immersion phase also helps the student understand interprofessional values and ethics along with role clarification which are deemed vital ingredients for effective team work and collaboration in healthcare. Learning is largely confined to the workplace/clinical setting with case rounds, bedside rounds and team meetings having a major role. Interprofessional simulation-based education (IPSE) that vary in relation to duration, fidelity and professions involved are found to enhance learner outcomes relating to teamwork, leadership, and communication skills.14 Common learning arenas or electives on topics such as doctor-patient communication, patient safety, chronic disease management and managing difficult conversations in clinical setting are good approaches that may be adopted during the integration phase. They not only assist in the indoctrination of collaborative competencies but also help in presenting certain sticky issues in the curriculum that are associated with modern health care delivery. The mastery phase necessitates the integration of critical thinking and problem solving in complex real-world situations. With the nature of learning approaches cited, it is evident that the role of an interprofessional facilitator will go way beyond the conventional roles of a health professions educator. It is evident that early introduction and implementation of a range of settings combined with diversity of instructional methods hold the key for promoting interprofessional learning.

Assessment of IPE Competencies

Assessment is at the core of learning. The core concepts of assessment remain the same even for assessing interprofessional education and practice. Optimizing assessment would require multiple methods, multiple assessors, proper selection and training of assessors, reconceptualization of the role of psychometrics and recognition of the importance of group process in reaching critical decisions about competence. For facilitating assessment, it is preferable that the competency be broken down into parts. For example, teamwork competency can be broken down into team/collective orientation, shared mental models, mutual trust, and closed-loop communication. It is important to develop behavioral examples for the competency. The next step in assessment is deciding the level at which it would be assessed: individual, team and organization. It could be assessed at any one level or using different combinations. Once the level(s) has been decided, the appropriate assessment tool needs to be identified.

One such tool is the IPEC Competency Self-Assessment Survey, designed to assess competencies related to collaborative practice at the healthcare degree program level through individual student self-assessment. representing six disciplines. Results can help inform curriculum planning, track the effects of degree programs on interprofessional competency, and provide data that can be used within and between institutions to compare programmatic outcomes.

IPEC Competency Self-Assessment Survey

This instrument was designed to assess competencies related to collaborative practice at the healthcare degree program level through individual student self-assessment. representing six disciplines. Results can help inform curriculum planning, track the effects of degree programs on interprofessional competency, and provide data that can be used within and between institutions to compare programmatic outcomes. The original validity study with a sample of 481 students at a single institution demonstrated good factor structure and internal consistency.

Instrument Details:

Instrument Type: Self-report (e.g., survey, questionnaire, self-rating)
Content: The items are based on the 42 core competency statements developed by the Interprofessional Education Collaborative's expert panel (2011). This Collaborative convened representatives from six national professional associations: the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, the Association of Schools of Public Health, the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, the American Dental Education Association, and the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Instrument Length: Original tool: 42 items; revised tool, 16 items.

Psychometric Properties:

Internal Structure: In the original study, factor analysis accounted for 79% of the variance in the response data in four factors. Component alphas for the four factors ranged from 0.96 to 0.98. In the refinement studies, exploratory factor analysis with another sample showed alphas for two strong factors consistently in the same range. Confirmatory factor analysis with a third sample yielded a normed Chi-square (X2/df) value of 2.85, which is within the acceptable range for model fit with high alpha values for each factor (0.92 for Factor 1 and 0.96 for Factor 2).

Response Rates and Data:

Response Process: Overall response rates were low, with 481 of 3236 students responding (14.9%) for the original study. Response rates in subsequent samples ranged from 9% to 19%.
Notes for Data Sources: The original study included 481 students enrolled in clinical degree programs for the 2012 academic year on the health science campus at a major urban institution.
Relation to Other Variables: Scores on the four domains in the original study did not significantly differ across years of education or discipline (i.e., medicine, nursing, and pharmacy). However, the median score for roles and responsibilities was significantly different for nurses compared to other disciplines.

Challenges and Solutions in Implementing IPE

Skills of managing change and communication are considered pivotal in this success formula. Invalid assumptions are often a cause for breakdown in collaboration and teamwork, be it education or patient care. Organizational barriers are largely related to the lack of understanding about IPE and IPCP. Power hierarchy prevalent in the institutions can underrate the knowledge and appreciation of other health professional's role, hindering adoption of curricular approaches that recommend transformative changes. As encountered with any academic reform, hesitancy on the part of major stakeholders for change has been identified as a major concern. In a nutshell, team composition, adaptability of the team members and administrative support are crucial factors that will determine the outcomes of such curricular interventions. Shared interprofessional vision regardless of position is an important factor that contributes to flawless implementation.

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