Projects Capacity Building

Developing a short learning course for IPECP facilitators

Interprofessional facilitators (for education and practice) have to be trained because the dynamics of facilitating an interprofessional team is different than those of an uniprofessional or multiprofessional team.

The current genre of educators has been trained in uniprofessional silos and most have not experience true interprofessional collaboration where the values of person-centredness, shared values, shared decision-making and distributive leadership have been demonstrated.

Therefore, most interprofessional facilitators themselves have to adopt new or adapt their existing educational theories and philosophies to incorporate those associated with interprofessional education and collaborative practice.

Progress to date

National and international interprofessional education facilitators reached consensus on interprofessional facilitator capabilities through a Delphi technique and the short report was published in the Journal of Interprofessional care.

The key competencies that were identified for an IPECP facilitator are the capability to:

  • Establish and maintain an optimal supportive learning environment that facilitates IPECP
  • Model person/people centred care and communication, including health dialogue, during interactions with other health professionals and with patients, families and communities
  • Use terminology related to IPE and collaborative practice consistently and correctly
  • Debate the foundational philosophy and values of interprofessional education and collaborative practice as well as their implication in instructional and institutional reform
  • Facilitate effective teamwork, including conflict resolution, through the use of a range of techniques
  • Develop reflexivity in students by using various techniques
  • Facilitate role clarification between different professions and transprofessionality in task sharing
  • Facilitate the learning of students in interprofessional groups in healthcare and other health educational settings
  • Explain why interprofessional collaborative practice is essential in order to improve health outcomes
  • Use the International Classification of Functioning and Disability as a common language and approach among the healthcare workforce

A template for the development of the learner-centred interactive teaching and learning material was also developed.

Furthermore, Yvonne Botma became a collaborator of Interprofessional.Global’s Academic Workforce Development working group. AfrIPEN will benefit from close collaboration with the global confederation.

Next steps:

  1. We need collaborators to develop the teaching and learning material per capability. Please raise your hand by joining this working group.
  2. The training programme will be piloted in Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, South Africa and Zimbabwe in close collaboration with the working group that will be conducting the study to evaluate the impact of IPCP on health outcomes, human resources, health systems and finances.
  3. The target date for the delivery of the facilitator as well as learner guide is before the 3rd AfrIPEN conference in 2021, where we’ll launch the material and offer our first facilitator training programme.

Progress to date

Join the Working Group

Join as Collaborator in this working group.

Scroll to Top