Creating a co-learning environment: Interprofessional education in the community.

摘要

The ability of individuals, families and communities to be healthy is profoundly affected by social determinants of health such as income and its distribution, housing, food security, social safety nets, and social exclusion (Raphael, 2004). No one profession within health care or social services is equipped to respond to the underlying economic and social causes of poverty and poor health alone (Barr, Koppel, Reeves, Hammick, & Freeth, 2005). In addition to learning to work interprofessionally, professionals need to learn to work together with members of the community in their efforts to address the social determinants of health.;Through using the processes inherent within grounded theory methodology, I developed a co-learning theoretical model where the core variable of co-learning emerged as 'getting to the core' (See Figure 1, page 60). Co-learners get to the core of who they are as human beings in relation to others, to the core of who they are as nurses, social workers, or as people who have experienced life events such as homelessness. They get to the core of relationships and to the core of the meaning of working together on issues that impact each of them in different and separate ways. Those who are successful in co-learning with others emerge different, with hope and determination to change and to work toward changing the world around them. The co-learning model developed in this study is ready to use in the development and evaluation of interprofessional education programs that actively include community members as teachers and learners, experts and novices.;The Downtown Community Initiative (DCI), a collaborative partnership between the University of Calgary Faculties of Nursing and Social Work and The Salvation Army (TSA) Centre of Hope and Booth Centre, homeless shelters in downtown Calgary, provided the setting for this study. The mission of the DCI is to build a foundation for co-learning between an inner-city population, TSA staff, students and faculty for the purpose of improving the health and well-being of all involved (Downtown Community Initiative, 2005).The question guiding this study was 'what are the conditions that support co-learning in community-based interprofessional education?'