Catalyzing Interprofessional Opportunities to Enhance Innovative Education and Funded Research Capacity

Background

The articulated Grand Challenges are a signifier of the ongoing, though arguably, increasing complexity of social work’s landscape. The blurring and near elimination of borders that has rendered the world a global space, while informing the complexity of issues and challenges also creates a proving ground for innovation toward change. Among the many challenges in the global landscape is what the World Health Organization characterized as the “global health crisis” (WHO, 2010), calling for action, and specifically identifying interprofessional education and collaborative practice as “an innovative strategy that will play an important role in mitigating” the crisis (p.7). Leading up to, and then in response to the WHO call, there has been a swift proliferation of interest in and developments related to interprofessional education and practice, with particular emphasis on the allied health professions. In fact, a number of professional disciplines have experienced recent and marked shifts in accreditation standards that make interprofessional educational opportunities mandatory (e.g., pharmacy and medicine). While collaborative educational and practice enterprises may be understood as innovative in the context of other professions, social work has an expansive history of consistent commitment to collaboration across disciplinary and professional bounds; given this commitment, social work should be a leader in these efforts in education and research, with translational implications for practice. This experiential workshop invites participants to catalyze this leadership opportunity. Through applied exercises designed to mobilize creativity, participants will develop innovative strategies to identify interprofessional education and research opportunities that can be transferred to their institutional contexts, as well as to their own research programs. Strategies to enhance capacity to garner extramural funding to support these interprofessional efforts will also be discussed.

Methods

The author of this proposed workshop has an extensive research background focused on innovation in social work education, and in inter- and trans-disciplinary and interprofessional education, including a current study funded by the National Science Foundation. The author has facilitated interprofessional education workshops for students, and was appointed to a University-wide steering committee comprised of one representative from each of the University’s allied health professional disciplines. The committee’s charge and opportunity is to build on best practices and establish an innovative model for institution-wide interprofessional education.

Results

The author will leverage this body of expertise to facilitate an experiential workshop informed by the following four objectives: 1) to develop participants’ understanding of interprofessional education and articulated competencies, 2) to engage in activities designed to elicit and mobilize creativity, understood as a specific thinking skill, to inform the development of innovative interprofessional education and research plans, 3) to discuss strategies to maximize potential to garner extramural funding to support these efforts, and 4) to solidify and expand a network of social work scholars who are well-informed and poised to take leadership in the interprofessional education and scholarship space.

Conclusion

With a focus on pragmatic and experiential approaches, this workshop will contribute to social work’s discourse on interprofessional education and research, focusing on experiential approaches to enhance capacity for leadership and innovation.