Interprofessional Education
At the School of Pharmacy at Newcastle University, we uphold the concept of interprofessional education and offer practical experience.
The General Pharmaceutical Council’s (GPhC) standard 5.6 states that:
- “the MPharm curriculum must include practical experience of working with patients, carers and other healthcare professionals and practical experience should increase year on year”
This requirement reflects the concept of Interprofessional Education (IPE), defined in 1997 by the Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education (CAIPE), as:
- “occasions when two or more professions learn with, from and about each other to improve collaboration and the quality of health and social care”
The professionals within the modern health and social care sectors provide care in an integrated manner. As such, there is a need for professionals to prepare for this collaborative practice.
The Faculty of Medical Sciences and Faculty of Humanities and Social Science incorporate the same IPE strategy into our programmes
Across these programmes, we train students to become professionals allied to healthcare. There is a collaborative effort to provide opportunities for students to learn with, from and about each other. The IPE activities vary in their intensity from:
- short experiences of ‘exposure’
- longer experiences of ‘immersion’ with more opportunity for interaction
- longitudinal experiences of ‘mastery’, where students maintain a working and learning relationship across a series of sessions
The aims are for students to have the opportunity to develop and show the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours that are appropriate to support collaborative practice in the real world. Students are encouraged and supported to gain evidence of their development through IPE for professional portfolios and on training post and employment applications.