Application of constructivism and cognitive flexibility theory to build a Comprehensive, Integrated, Multimodal...

Interprofessional Education (IPE) is challenging to implement and assess due to barriers preventing interprofessional communication, inadequately defined accreditation criteria, ambiguous professional roles and responsibilities, and the inherently "ill-structured" educational construct of IPE. To address these gaps, a novel comprehensive, integrated, and multimodal interprofessional education and practice (CIM-IPEP) curriculum involving students from pharmacy, medicine, psychology, and nursing professional degree programmes was created. CIM-IPEP was carefully designed based on cognitive flexibility theory (CFT) to reinforce the complexities associated with teaching and learning for multi-faceted and dynamic domains such as IPE. CFT emphasises pluralistic representation, repetition, and cognitive layering in experiential learning for ill-structured domains. Thus, CIM-IPEP was vertically and horizontally aligned within individual colleges and included diverse IPE experiences in required courses such as Foundations of IPE, and high-fidelity simulation events, culminating in an IPE-Hotspotting elective, which exposed learners to real-world patient cases. Cases were presented in a format of increasing complexity emphasising the integration of foundational and skills-based learning using constructivist methods such as Team-Based and Case-Based Learning. CIM-IPEP offers a novel IPE model. Here we present a stepwise development and implementation blueprint for similar IPE programmes that is readily transferable to other health profession education (HPE) programmes.