Practice architectures in interprofessional health professions education: An international multi-site research study

Globally, learning to collaborate across professions is seen as crucial to assure patient safety and the changing demands of health care.

Joint research beyond single case studies is needed in order to best develop and implement curriculum design for interprofessional education (IPE) in professional health programmes.

The purpose of the project are to identify how IPE emerges when embedded as clinical practice placements in local sites of health care clinical practices. An international group of researchers from Sweden, Norway, Australia and New Zealand will collaborate in the project.

A joint practice-oriented, theoretical framework will be applied in combination with a multiple case research design and focused ethnographic field studies of IPE at four local sites.

The common theoretical framework will make it possible to identify comparable dimensions across the multiple cases, as well as enabling core questions about IPE that are critical for design of interprofessional education to be addressed.

The research design has been developed through an Exploratory Workshop funded by the Swedish Research Council, Educational Sciences, 2021.

The expected outcomes of the project are that the ethnographic field studies will generate thick descriptions that attune to specific cultural and practice contexts.

The broader impact of the study will also contribute with generation of new knowledge of how the design of IPE can be collaboratively researched.