Ni neart gan chur le cheile 'no strength unless together': addressing the naked emperor of interprofessional education in Ireland.

摘要

The Irish Health Service Executive has increasingly identified interprofessional education (IPE) and working together as essential to the task of health and social care staff (Health Service Executive, 2009), yet IPE does not appear to be high on the health education agenda (Finucane & Kellett, 2007). The study was therefore undertaken to examine the psycho-social context of IPE in Ireland by exploring the perspectives of a group of health care education leaders, and to identify whether these results could support developments in IPE.Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with eight senior educators to elicit their views and experiences of IPE. They included heads of Medicine (1), Nursing (2), Behavioural Sciences (3), Speech & Language Therapy (4), Occupational Therapy (5), Dentistry (6), a College Dean (7) and a senior Medical Educator (8). The Chair of the hospital Research Ethics Committee confirmed that the study conforms to all relevant ethical guidelines. All participants provided informed consent. Verbatim transcripts were analysed by thematic content analysis.