Navigating in a landscape of practices : Healthcare students’ interprofessional collaboration and learning

Abstract

Scientific advances, along with better conditions for attaining healthy lifestyles, have had the result that more people live longer. On the flipside of this success, people are also living longer with diseases and are thus in need of more health care than before. This takes up available resources and the health care system must adapt accordingly. One solution that has been put forward for this dilemma is interprofessional collaboration. Resources can be used more efficiently by collaborating across professional boundaries, and we can benefit from each other's competencies in a way that serves both the patient and the system better. However, being able to collaborate with colleagues of different professional backgrounds is not a given. Just because you have a healthcare education does not mean that you automatically know how to collaborate with others. Interprofessional education must therefore be offered to health care students so they can learn to collaborate at an early stage.