Applying Landscapes of Practice Principles to the Design of Interprofessional Education

Although interprofessional education (IPE) is acknowledged as a way to prepare health professions students for future interprofessional collaboration (IPC), there is a need to better ground IPE-design in learning theory. Landscapes of practice and its concepts of knowledgeability and identification are suggested as a framework that may help optimize IPE. This Observation paper provides an explanation of how these concepts might be used in IPE-design.

We propose using three modes of identification, i.e., engagement, imagination, and alignment, described in this framework, for an IPE-design that fosters IPC skills, professional identity formation, and knowledgeability about a field and its actors. Identification and knowledgeability are through to enable successful collaboration across professional and practice boundaries.

Focusing on identification implies that students develop a sense of relevance to one another in solving complex problems (engagement), they become aware of their own roles and responsibilities in relation to others (imagination), and they gain awareness of the context in which the different professions align and collaborate (alignment). Altogether, this enables students to become knowledgeable in the landscape, which prepares them for successful interprofessional collaboration in practice.