This guide is for health and social care professionals who teach or guide others' learning before and after qualification, in formal courses or the workplace. It clarifies the understanding of interprofessional learning and explores the concept of teams and team working. Illustrated by examples from practice, the practicalities of effective interprofessional learning are described, and the underlying concepts of patient-centred care, excellent communication, development of capacity and clarity of roles that underpin this explored.

Undergraduate inter- and multi-professional education has traditionally aimed to develop health professionals who are able to collaborate effectively in comprehensive healthcare delivery. The respective professions learn from and about each other through comparisons of roles, responsibilities, powers, duties and perspectives in order to promote integrated service. Described here is the educational rationale of a multi-professional course with a difference; one that injects value to undergraduate health professional education through the development of critical cross-field knowledge, skills and attitudes that unite rather than differentiate professions. The aim of this course, offered at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, is to lay an integrated, pan-professional foundation for the advancement of collective commitment to and understanding of national health and social development objectives such as primary health care, human rights and professionalism. Pan-professional refers to curriculum content that is core and of critical relevance to all participating professions. What is learned, how it is learned, how learning is facilitated and how it is applied, has been co-constructed by a multi-professional design team representing a range of health professions (audiology, medicine, occupational therapy, nursing, physiotherapy and speech therapy) and academic disciplines (anthropology, sociology, psychology, history, African studies and social development, information technology and language literacy). Education specialists facilitate the ongoing design process ensuring that the structure and content of the curriculum complies with contemporary adult learning principles and national higher education imperatives. Designing the original curriculum required the deconstruction of intra-professional and disciplinary canons of knowledge and ways of 'doing things' in order to identify and develop shared interpretations of critical epistemology and axiology for health professional practice in the South African context. This enabled the alignment of the learning objectives, at first year level, of all the represented professions. The educational rationale guiding the curriculum design process is discussed in Part 1 of two articles. Part 2 describes the 'nuts and bolts' or practicalities of the curriculum design process.

Multi-professional education has traditionally aimed to develop health professionals who are able to collaborate effectively in comprehensive healthcare delivery. The respective professions learn about their differences in order to work together, rather than developing unity in their commitment to a shared vision of professionalism and service. In this, the second of two papers, the 'nuts and bolts' or practicalities of designing a transformed curriculum for a multi-professional course with a difference is described. Guidelines for the curriculum design process, which seeks to be innovative, grounded in theory and relevant to the learning of the students and the ultimately the health of the patients, include: valuing education; gaining buy-in; securing buy-out; defining of roles; seeking consensus; negotiating difference and expediting decisions. The phases of the design process are described, as well as the educational outcomes envisaged during the process. Reflections of the designers, in particular on what it means to be a multi-professional team, and a reconceptualization of multi-professional education are presented as challenges for educators of health professionals.

Background: An integrated sense of professionalism enables health professionals to draw on relevant knowledge in context and to apply a set of professional responsibilities and ethical principles in the midst of changing work environments [1,2]. Inculcating professionalism is therefore a critical goal of health professional education. Two multi-professional courses for first year Health Science students at the University of Cape Town, South Africa aim to lay the foundation for becoming an integrated health professional [3]. In these courses a diagram depicting the domains of the integrated health professional is used to focus the content of small group experiential exercises towards an appreciation of professionalism. The diagram serves as an organising framework for conceptualising an emerging professional identity and for directing learning towards the domains of 'self as professional ' [4,5].

WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN IN THIS AREA • Many papers describing multiprofessional educational activities relate to activities occurring late into curricula activity. • Meta-analyses demonstrate multiprofessional learning only becoming effective when students are placed in a working environment. • Scant attention is placed upon the early development of students, recognising the need to 'grow into professionalism' and sharing the development of those skills so relevant to both unprofessional and multiprofessional life. WHAT THIS WORK ADDS • This paper describes an early-exposure activity, related to multiprofessional learning, in which students share the learning of common requirements for professional development, and evaluate their experience in a positive manner. SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH • The real benefit to multiprofessional life and real-world activity will only be truly evaluated as their individual courses develop and the newly found skills of reflection are allowed to develop.