Hugh Barr

The effectiveness of interprofessional education: key findings from a new systematic review.

Over the past decade systematic reviews of interprofessional education (IPE) have provided a more informed understanding of the effects of this type of education. This paper contributes to this literature by reporting an update of a Cochrane systematic review published in this journal ten years ago (Zwarenstein et al., ). In updating this initial review, our current work involved searches of a number of electronic databases from 1999–2006, as well as reference lists, books, conference proceedings and websites. Like the previous review, only studies which employed randomized controlled trials, controlled-before and-after-studies and interrupted time series studies of IPE, and that reported validated professional practice and health care outcomes, were included. While the first review found no studies which met its inclusion criteria, the updated review located six IPE studies. This paper aims to add to the ongoing development of evidence for IPE. Despite some useful progress being made in relation to strengthening the evidence base for IPE, the paper concludes by stressing that further rigorous mixed method studies of IPE are needed to provide a greater clarity of IPE and its effects on professional practice and patient/client care.

The effectiveness of interprofessional education in healthcare: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Interprofessional education (IPE) emphasizes collaborative practice that aims at promoting the working relationships between two or more healthcare professions. However, there is paucity of literature about the effectiveness of IPE program in the healthcare. This systematic review and meta‐analysis aims to objectively determine the effectiveness of IPE in that field in terms of the improvement of students knowledge, skills and attitudes. The databases of OVID, ISI Knowledge of Science, and Medline (PubMed) were searched for the full‐text English language articles published during 2000–2016 using the MeSH terms “interprofessional education” AND “healthcare professionals” AND “multi‐professional” AND “impact” AND “effectiveness” OR “collaborative practice” OR “medical students” in Endnote X7. A systematic search finally selected 12 articles for detailed review and meta‐analysis. The effect summary value of 1.37 with confidence interval of 0.92–1.82 identifies statistically significant effectiveness of intervention by IPE program in healthcare. The Z test value of 5.99, significant at 5% level of significance, also shows a significant impact of IPE intervention as calculated by the random‐effects model. This meta‐analysis shows a positive impact and effectiveness of educational intervention by IPE program in various disciplines of healthcare. However, analysis of further clinical trials may be helpful in identifying the effect of IPE program on the students clinical competence.