Can one eat collaboration? Menus as metaphors of interprofessional collaboration

The turn of the century has seen a sudden upsurge in publications and initiatives around the development of interprofessional collaboration in Japan. In Japanese, the term 'team-treatment' is generally used to mean interprofessional collaboration, but hitherto there have been no generally accepted definitions and conceptualizations of the term, nor are there guidelines as to how it may be implemented in practice. In order to facilitate understanding of the different modes of interprofessional collaboration and issues in practice, we introduced the use of menus as metaphors for interprofessional collaboration in a class of first year students of nursing. There were two 90-minute classes available for exploring this topic. Through the use of a metaphor the students demonstrated they were able to conceptualize interprofessional collaboration, identify the value of nurses working together with other professionals and issues involved in making team-treatment work. The purpose of this paper is to share the experience of using metaphors as a teaching/learning strategy, including reflection on the successes and some limitations of what, for us, was an interesting educational innovation.