Achieving Patient-centered Care through Interprofessional Collaborative Practice
Introduction

Interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional collaborative practice (ICP) are part of the changing paradigm in which healthcare professionals and social care professionals work together as a collaborative team. According to the World Health Organization, IPE occurs when learners from two or more health professions engage in learning about, from, and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes, and ICP occurs when multiple health workers from different professional backgrounds work together with patients and families, careers and communities to deliver the highest quality of care.¹ While IPE has been a part of the conversation in healthcare since the 1970’s, it has gained momentum and financial support for broader implementation and research by the federal government, academic institutions, affordable care organizations, and non-profit organizations. In dental education, IPE is a part of the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) standards, and it is common practice for dental, dental hygiene and dental therapy students to work with other healthcare and social care professionals in the classroom, simulated patient care, and clinical settings. On a broader level, universities across the country are developing stronger relationships between different disciplines, such as, law, medicine, dentistry, nursing, public health, and others to build interprofessional curricular experiences for students. In order to facilitate this learning process, the Interprofessional Education Collaboration (IPEC) has developed a set of core competencies.