Enhancing interprofessional teamworking in health and social care.

The Centre for Interprofessional Practice has been delivering Post-Registration IPL to active clinical teams since 2002. Initially, these teams have included a range of healthcare staff from a variety of specialities involved in delivering patient care within an acute trust hospital setting.

As a result of an early pilot, a team-based IPL package was developed aiming to support active health/social care teams in enhancing their teamworking skills and improving their understanding of the different professional roles involved in patient/client care.

Due to the success of the programme, plans were made in late 2003 to focus on two specific areas of activity: teams spanning primary/secondary/social care boundaries focussing on patient safety, and interprofessional/cross-agency child protection teams.

Thus far, twelve teams and over one hundred staff from Health, Social Services, Education and the Police have been engaged in the post-registration IPL programme. Results evaluating its success have shown significant improvements in team climate, and examples of goals achieved that have had real impact on teamworking and on the patients/clients of the teams.

More recently, the Centre has revised the intervention to increase the focus on change management, to support teams to do more with less and thus to help teams optimise their current practice. 

The Centre will continue to work with post-registration teams as part of its continuum of interprofessional learning for pre- and post-registration students and professionals.

For more details about the programme and our work with specific teams, please click on the links to the left.  To view our brochure, click here: CIPP - Helping you improve current practice.