Interprofessional education for practitioners working with the survivors of violence: exploring early and longer-term...

Traditionally, practitioners working with the survivors of violence have been offered little in the way of formal education to help them understand why violence occurs and how they can collaborate to support survivors in an effective manner. To help address this need, a team led by one of the authors developed an innovative interprofessional course entitled, "Society, Violence and Practice". The course provided collaborative learning opportunities to practitioners working in various health, welfare and human services settings to equip them further to respond to survivors of violence in a cooperative and holistic manner. To generate an in-depth understanding of participants' views of the impact of the course an exploratory study was undertaken. Drawing upon an interpretivist framework, qualitative data in the form of focus group interviews, individual follow-up telephone interviews, emails and course documentation were collected. Data were analysed inductively to generate themes that could explore the nature of participants' perceptions relating to the differing impact of their interprofessional learning. Findings from this work indicated that the course had a number of early effects in relation to enhancing participants' confidence and knowledge of issues linked to working collaboratively with the survivors of violence. The follow-up data suggested that the course generated a number of longer-term gains on the participants' professional and interprofessional practice. The significance of these findings are discussed in relation to the interprofessional education and adult learning literature before conclusions are presented.