Community nurses and social workers learning together: a report of an interprofessional education initiative in South Wales

Collaboration between different professional groups and agencies is an essential element in the provision of high quality community care for people with complex health and social needs. There are, however, a number of barriers to effective interprofessional working. These include: the differing structures and operational philosophies of organizations; the differing languages and values of professional groups; professional and agency rivalries;and the fact that professional groups are, still, largely educated and trained in isolation. Interprofessional learning has been advocated as a possible solution to some of these problems. In this paper the rationale, planning, delivery and evaluation of one interprofessional education initiative are presented. Twelve months of planning between a team of three university teachers working in South Wales, United Kingdom, led to a combined soup of community nursing and social work students following post-qualifying courses at undergraduate diploma and first degree level participating in two shared learning sessions. Using an interactive approach the student group explored, first, professional roles and responsibilities and secondly, engaged in group work focused on the discussion of case studies. Student evaluation of the sessions indicated an overwhelming appreciation of the importance of interprofessional education in unidisciplinary education programmes.