Interprofessional education as an approach for reforming health professions education in Brazil: emerging findings

Interprofessional education (IPE) is an important issue to insert in the debate on the reform of the education of health professions in Brazil. This paper provides details on an emerging study, based in Brazil, whose aim is to explore the use of IPE as a strategy to reform health professional education to become more collaborative in nature. The study has adopted a sequential mixed-methods approach, and will conduct focus groups, individual interviews and surveys with students, teachers and administrators based in two universities. Initial findings have indicated that, at present, participants were not aware of systematic strategies to bring students from different courses together for IPE, which has created problems for the development of knowledge and skills for collaborative work. Further data will be gathered to expand this analysis. Nevertheless, there is already clear evidence that there is a need to integrate and strengthen the use of IPE in Brazil, as a key route forward to strengthening the process of reorientation training of health professionals.