Inter-professional education and the idea of an educated public

an article by Richard Anthony Davies (Independent Scholar, Leicester, UK) published in Journal of Vocational Education & Training Volume 65 Issue 2 (June 2013)

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a concern to re-negotiate the relationships been individual professionals working with the same people.

So, for example, healthcare staff are expected to coordinate their activities and ‘work together’. The end point is a collaborating together as a team of professionals often located in the same place. This demand for inter-professional working (IPW) has seen the rise of higher education programmes of study in IPW, now deemed an essential part of undergraduate education for these professional groups. The rationale is laudable, IPW ought to enhance the experience of the client and ultimately improve their outcomes. The two questions I want to raise in this paper are as follows: is inter-professional education (IPE) possible in the sense of an education that seeks to enable IPW, and if it is what form should it take. In pursuing these questions, I seek parallels with MacIntyre’s (1987) ‘idea of an educated public’. In doing so, I argue for an account of IPE and working premised on the development of a limited ‘educated public’ of healthcare professionals. I conclude with a limited specification of what this means in practice.

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