New Zealand Rehabilitation Association, Inc.

Early this year I reported on a submission made by myself and two colleagues to the ministerial taskforce on the development of the workforce in New Zealand's Primary Health Care Sector.  One of the main objectives of our submission was to promote the development of interprofessional education (IPE) in the health sector and to highlight the barriers the currently exist to its uptake.  The final report from this ministerial taskforce, entitled "Working Together for Better Primary Health Care", was published on 2 September 2008 and can be downloaded from the Ministry of Health’s website.

In terms of promotion of IPE, the report from this ministerial taskforce was generally pleasing.  For the first time, this document publicly acknowledges that there are some organisational barriers at a national level to uptake of IPE and that public funding of clinical training tends to favour uni-disciplinary courses.  The report also highlighted the potential advantages of using IPE to train health professionals to work together in teams – something generally considered fundamentally important in many parts of the health sector, including those involved rehabilitation! 

Unfortunately however not all of the recommendations in our submission to this taskforce ended up being included in this final report from the Ministry.  In particular, our recommendation that there needs to be a central body in New Zealand (either within in the Ministry of Health or outside of it) to champion IPE or to promote strategies to implement it, as there are in other countries, was not reported.  This is a shame because it would appear difficult to address some of the systemic barriers to IPE or to progress with the development such courses in NZ without an agency that has the primarily role to undertake these sorts of activities.  Equally frustrating was the recommendation that ‘the Ministry of Health fund and evaluate selected primary health care pilots to assess the clinical effectiveness of multi-disciplinary learning and collaborative practice’ (p15).  Postgraduate, interprofessional courses in primary care (and rehabilitation) already exist and have been running successful for many years despite the barriers.  Why is a pilot needed now?  Why not just evaluate and support the IPE programmes that currently exist?  Of course, funding research into the development of and outcomes from IPE courses would be most welcome, but funding such research should not be used as yet another barrier to the promotion and uptake of IPE now.

Other news: Upcoming IPE Workshop!

Tuesday, 24 February 2009 – 8:30am-4:30pm
We are hosting in University of Otago (in Wellington) a one-day interactive workshop on “Interprofessional Education: Teaching Teamwork for the Health Sector”.  Two international leaders in IPE, Professor Dawn Forman and Helena Low are coming from the Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education (CAIPE) in the UK to run this workshop.  The workshop is open to all health educators, doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, managers and funders in the health sector, but spaces are limited so, if you are interested, register early.  Registration fees have fortunately been kept to a minimum (early bird rate only $35) as a result of sponsorship gathered by the Australasian Interprofessional Practice and Education Network and some financial contributions from the University of Otago (in Wellington) - so this really is a good opportunity.
For more information or to register, please go to: http://www.uow.otago.ac.nz/academic/gp/IPE2009/index.html