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Table 3 Ten tips to assist facilitation of interprofessional learning and the building of positive team function

From: Interprofessional education: tips for design and implementation

Structured, early orientation to IPL

Early participation in IPE activities promotes recognition of the need for effective communication within healthcare teams, and better prepares students for interprofessional practice.

Role of other professions

Ensure you have a good understanding of the role of each profession.

Questioning

Allow discussion time, and elicit answers from the students, rather than giving answers yourself. For example, “What evidence supports your claim?”

Use a reflective approach, with probing questions that enable the development of students’ problem solving and clinical reasoning skills.

Focus on the needs of patients

Assist in the breakdown of hierarchical barriers by focussing on patient needs and patient safety.

Trust

Encourage the building of relationships and trust, between both the facilitator and students, and also within student teams. Trust is established through ongoing professional and personal interactions [25].

Flipped classroom approach

The flipped classroom approach to interprofessional education has many benefits. It encourages a ‘level playing field’, where all students are provided with the same pre-class information, and attend class with this assumed knowledge. This frees up in-class time for student-centred learning, where the facilitator is free to support the knowledge and skills development of students.

Be a facilitator, not a lecturer

You are not a content expert in every discipline. Although you may be more accustomed to delivering content, rather than facilitating discussion, it is important to facilitate, and not lecture. Try to follow the 90:10 rule: listen for 90% of the time, and talk for 10% [26].

Peer learning

Encourage peer teaching and learning. Students are closer to each other in terms of knowledge and skills, and are likely to have a greater understanding than tutors regarding concepts their peers are struggling with. They are sometimes better than faculty at teaching concepts to one another [27].

Review and reflect

Since interprofessional activities are normally focussed on a health topic, or patient case, students may not realise how much they have learnt about each other’s professions. For this reason, it is recommended that you review and make the interprofessional concepts explicit at the end of class, to help students recognise the outcomes, and their achievements.

Assessment and Feedback

There are many available interprofessional competency frameworks to draw from in designing assessment activities [5, 8, 28]. The use of peer assessment and peer feedback is well suited to interprofessional activities, promoting self-assessment and reflection on one’s own work. However, peer assessment may be viewed negatively if the process is not transparent, with clear assessment criteria [29].