A New Lens on Interprofessional Education: Organizational Behavior Theories Explain One Institution's Experience With Authentic Collaboration.

Résumé

Interprofessional education (IPE) is based in the belief that increasing specialization of healthcare has led to no single profession being able to encompass all the knowledge and skills to support comprehensive care, thus requiring the system's reliance on functional healthcare teams. A large academic radiation medicine program built a continuing education program founded in the knowledge that true interprofessional collaboration (IPC) between medical physics, radiation oncology, and radiation therapy is essential for optimal care delivery. The curricular design emphasized the importance of IPC through both concrete instruction on these concepts and through emulation of the collaborative model by course faculty. Participants of the various Program courses reported the value of the interprofessional elements of the course, and the related learnings that influenced their subsequent practice. Little work has examined how the effort required for the delivery of high quality IPE impacts-or may be impacted by-the IPC of faculty who engage in delivering the Program This may include the depth of investment required to truly operate as a functional team, how such investment bred familiarity, and by extension how it reduced the interference of a perceived hierarchy, and improved the ability to collaborate and problem-solve at the front lines. Organizational behavior theories including group cohesion theory, social capital theory, and psychological safety support conceptualization of the value of faculty collaboration, as does the critical framing of the emancipatory role of IPE. This review considers such theories in the context of a successful IPC model, and the value to faculty and the organizations in which they practice, including generation of new ideas, projects and collaborations and took shape in many observable ways.