Health professions students are largely educated within their own disciplines.  A foundational interprofessional curriculum counters that fragmentation, building the knowledge, skills, and attitudes students need for team-based practice (World Health Organization [WHO], 2010).  Learning alongside peers from other professions develops understanding of one another's roles and responsibilities along with skills in communication, teamwork, collaborative decision-making and problem solving, and shared leadership (Interprofessional Education Collaborative [IPEC], 2023). 

High-quality interprofessional education is not a series of isolated events.  It spans the full curriculum, moving learners from early didactic experiences toward advanced clinical ones (IPEC, 2023), through a sequence that increases in depth and complexity from a program's start to its end (Zorek et al., 2022).  Texas A&M Health's Foundational Curriculum is built on this principle: each experience establishes competencies that later experiences revisit and extend. 

Foundational experiences emphasize structured applied learning through facilitated discussion, case-based learning, simulation, team-based problem solving, and teamwork and communication skills training.  Structured interprofessional education improves learner outcomes across these methods (Guraya & Barr, 2018).  Case-based approaches strengthen students' grasp of professional roles (Nasir et al., 2017), and simulation improves teamwork and communication (Sezgin & Bektas, 2023). 

Together, the experiences below comprise Texas A&M Health's Foundational IPE Curriculum and prepare students to progress along a developmental continuum of interprofessional learning to Learning in Practice. 
 
Current Foundational Curriculum Opportunities 

 Learn More 

Learn more about the IPEC Core Competencies and the WHO Framework for Action that ground this curriculum.  To discuss curricular integration, contact IPER at iper@tamu.edu. 

References 

Guraya, S. Y., & Barr, H. (2018). The effectiveness of interprofessional education in healthcare: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Kaohsiung Journal of Medical Sciences, 34(3), 160–165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.kjms.2017.12.009 

Interprofessional Education Collaborative. (2023). IPEC core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Version 3. Washington, DC: Interprofessional Education Collaborative. https://www.ipecollaborative.org/ipec-core-competencies 

Nasir, J., Goldie, J., Little, A., Banerjee, D., & Reeves, S. (2017). Case-based interprofessional learning for undergraduate healthcare professionals in the clinical setting. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 31(1), 125–128. https://doi.org/10.1080/13561820.2016.1233395 

Sezgin, M. G., & Bektas, H. (2023). Effectiveness of interprofessional simulation-based education programs to improve teamwork and communication for students in the healthcare profession: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Nurse Education Today, 120, 105619. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2022.105619 

World Health Organization. (2010). Framework for action on interprofessional education and collaborative practice (WHO/HRH/HPN/10.3). Geneva: World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/framework-for-action-on-interprofessional-education-collaborative-practice 

Zorek, J. A., Ragucci, K., Eickhoff, J., Najjar, G., Ballard, J., Blue, A. V., Bronstein, L., Dow, A., Gunaldo, T. P., Hageman, H., Karpa, K., Michalec, B., Nickol, D., Odiaga, J., Ohtake, P., Pfeifle, A., Southerland, J. H., Vlasses, F., Young, V., & Zomorodi, M. (2022). Development and validation of the IPEC Institutional Assessment Instrument. Journal of Interprofessional Education & Practice, 29, 100553. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xjep.2022.100553