The rapidly unfolding developments within today's health-care arena, such as patient-centered initiatives, are a call for psychology to help meet complex, integrated health-care needs. It's more important than ever for our field to develop a pipeline of education and training that serves the needs of the student and the prudent as they prepare to practice in a world of integrated care, a world where silos of practice are being toppled and making way for interprofessional collaboration.
After all, it has been more than 20 years now since the Institute of Medicine proposed that primary care be defined as "the provision of integrated, accessible health-care services by an interdisciplinary team of clinicians" (IOM, 1994).
Central to this definition is the recognition that today's complex health needs require more than one discipline to address them effectively. Interprofessional collaboration can be defined as partnerships between teams of health providers and patients in a participatory, collaborative and coordinated approach to shared decision-making around health-related issues. This collaboration requires an appreciation for, and blending of, differing professional cultures through the sharing of knowledge, skills and values in support of improved outcomes and quality of care.
A developmental focus is essential to the success of this interprofessional integration. Retooling today's workforce is a top priority given the growing demand for psychologists in primary-care settings. But it is joined by the need for the field to fashion more opportunities for psychology trainees to receive education and training within practica, internships and postdoctoral fellowships situated within, or drawing from, primary- and integrated-care settings. Nor should undergraduate psychology students be left out. Research suggests that the collaborative skills gained through an interprofessional experience may well be beneficial to psychology students who wind up working outside of the health-care arena, as well as within it (Roberts & Forman, 2015).
Significant progress has been made within the field of psychology recently in relation to interprofessional advances. Building on the 2012 Inter-Organizational Work Group on Competencies for Primary Care for Psychology Practice initiative, the work group recently identified a range of interprofessional competencies needed to support an effective workforce shift within integrated contexts (APA, 2015; www.apa.org/ed/resources/competencies-practice.pdfopens in new window).
Of course, advancing a culture of interprofessional competence requires the ability to measure interprofessionalism, as well as to assess the distinct outcomes associated with it. The recent work of the Interprofessional Professionalism Collaborative and the Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative represents significant steps forward in this regard. These are important efforts in assessing a range of interprofessional attitudes, values and skills, as well as aspects of patient and provider satisfaction specifically linked to interprofessional practice.
And make no mistake about it, education and training in interprofessional practice can make a profound difference. A single example comes from the research of Anderson and Lovejoy (2000) who described a primary-care training program in which clinical psychology students were teamed with medical residents for the completion of a four-month practicum in a family medicine outpatient clinic. Both groups showed marked improvement across the course of their experience. In addition, referrals from medical residents to psychology trainees increased twelve-fold following the completion of the program, demonstrating the enduring power of interprofessional collaboration in sustaining its gains across time.
Interprofessional training and education for psychologists can pay rich dividends for the welfare of the patients served in an integrated health-care system. Health-care reform endeavors, such as patient-centered initiatives, sound the call for us to envision the training we need today in preparation for the reality of tomorrow. We stand to benefit a great deal from interprofessional training. The time is now to redouble our efforts at interprofessional education in support of the development of those who will fill the ranks of tomorrow's integrated health-care workforce, from the student to the prudent.
