Preparing students to work effectively in interprofessional health and social care teams

Interprofessional education (IPE) has 'learning to work effectively in interprofessional teams' as one of its central learning outcomes. Whilst much is made in IPE of allocating health and social care students into interprofessional teams and setting them a task to complete, it has proved difficult to find a fair and equitable method of assessing how effective each individual has been in contributing to the task. This difficulty is compounded when the module is delivered predominantly online. This paper describes the recent push to establish meaningful educational outcomes for those involved in delivering IPE to pre-registration health and social care students. It then describes the use of a web-based peer assessment tool (Web PA) developed at Loughborough and Hull Universities (UK) which has been adapted by Glasgow Caledonian University (UK) for assessing the outcome of contributing effectively to IPE-related online group tasks. The paper outlines how the process of web-based peer assessment operates in theory and how it has been received in practice. An illustration is given that shows how the process successfully discriminates between those that are working effectively in interprofessional teams and those that are not. The value of the process is discussed.