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Waters College of Health Professions > Get to Know the Waters College of Health Professions > Interprofessional Health Professions Collaboration

Interprofessional Health Professions Collaboration

The Waters College of Health Professions is committed to promoting collaboration among different health professions, community partners, students and educators. Resources and links here can be used to create and promote effective collaborative learning and practice. We are passionate about improving the quality of patient and population centered care by emphasizing the core competencies of interprofessional collaborative health care.

General Competency

Work with others to maintain a climate of mutual respect and a shared value for patient and community centered care.1

Specific Competencies

  • Place the interests of patients and populations at the center of health care delivery.
  • Maintain the dignity, privacy, and confidentiality of patients within team-based care.
  • Embrace and respect the diversity and individual differences of patients, populations, and health care team members.
  • Respect the unique cultures, values, roles/responsibilities, and expertise of other health professions.
  • Work in cooperation with those who receive care, those who provide care, and others who contribute to or support
    the delivery of disease prevention and health services.
  • Develop a trusting relationship with patients, families, and other team members (CIHC, 2010).
  • Demonstrate high standards of ethical conduct and quality of care in one’s contributions to team-based care.
  • Manage ethical dilemmas specific to interprofessional patient/population centered care situations.
  • Act with honesty and integrity in relationships with patients, families, and other team members.
  • Maintain competence in one’s own profession appropriate to the scope of practice

1 Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel. (2011). Core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Report of an expert panel. Washington, D.C.: Interprofessional Education Collaborative.

General Competency

Use the knowledge of one’s own role and those of other professions to appropriately assess and address the healthcare needs of the patients and populations served.1

Specific Competencies

  • Communicate one’s roles and responsibilities clearly to patients, families, and other professionals.
  • Recognize one’s limitations in skills, knowledge, and abilities.
  • Engage diverse healthcare professionals who complement one’s own professional expertise, as well as associated resources, to develop strategies to meet specific patient care needs.
  • Explain the roles and responsibilities of other care providers and how the team works together to provide care.
  • Use the full scope of knowledge, skills, and abilities of available health professionals and healthcare workers to provide care that is safe, timely, efficient, effective, and equitable.
  • Communicate with team members to clarify each member’s responsibility in executing components of a treatment plan or public health intervention.
  • Forge interdependent relationships with other professions to improve care and advance learning.
  • Engage in continuous professional and interprofessional development to enhance team performance.
  • Use unique and complementary abilities of all members of the team to optimize patient care.

1 Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel. (2011). Core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Report of an expert panel. Washington, D.C.: Interprofessional Education Collaborative.

General Competency

Communicate with patients, families, communities, and other health professionals in a responsive and responsible manner that supports a team approach to the maintenance of health and the treatment of disease.1

Specific Competencies

  • Choose effective communication tools and techniques to facilitate discussions and interactions that enhance team function, including information systems and communication technologies.
  • Organize and communicate information with patients, families, and healthcare team members in a form that is understandable, avoiding discipline-specific terminology when possible.
  • Express one’s knowledge and opinions to team members involved in patient care with confidence, clarity, and respect, working to ensure common understanding of information and treatment and care decisions.
  • Listen actively, and encourage ideas and opinions of other team members.
  • Give timely, sensitive, instructive feedback to others about their performance on the team, responding respectfully as a team member to feedback from others.
  • Use respectful language appropriate for a given difficult situation, crucial conversation, or interprofessional conflict.
  • Recognize how one’s own uniqueness, including experience level, expertise, culture, power, and hierarchy within the healthcare team, contributes to effective communication, conflict resolution, and positive interprofessional working relationships (University of Toronto, 2008).
  • Communicate consistently the importance of teamwork in patient-centered and community-focused care.

1 Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel. (2011). Core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Report of an expert panel. Washington, D.C.: Interprofessional Education Collaborative.

General Competency

Apply relationship-building values and the principles of team dynamics to perform effectively in different team roles to plan and deliver patient/population-centered care that is safe, timely, efficient, effective, and equitable.1

Specific Competencies

  • Describe the process of team development, and the roles and practices of effective teams.
  • Develop consensus on the ethical principles to guide all aspects of patient care and team work.
  • Engage other health professionals in shared patient-centered problem-solving appropriate to the specific care situation.
  • Integrate the knowledge and experience of other professions to inform care decisions, while respecting patient and community values and priorities/preferences for care, appropriate to the specific care situation.
  • Apply leadership practices that support collaborative practice and team effectiveness.
  • Engage one’s self and others to constructively manage disagreements about values, roles, goals, and actions that arise among healthcare professionals and with patients and families.
  • Share accountability with other professions, patients, and communities for outcomes relevant to prevention and health care.
  • Reflect on individual and team performance for individual and team performance improvement.
  • Use process improvement strategies to increase the effectiveness of interprofessional teamwork and team-based care.
  • Use available evidence to inform effective teamwork and team-based practices.
  • Perform effectively on teams and in different team roles in a variety of settings.

1 Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel. (2011). Core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Report of an expert panel. Washington, D.C.: Interprofessional Education Collaborative.

Interprofessional Health Professions Collaboration Resources

Interprofessional Associations and Conferences

European Interprofessional Education Network (EIPEN)

European Interprofessional Education Network (EIPEN) was founded in 2000. EIPEN develops and shares effective interprofessional training programs, methods and materials for improving collaborative practice in health and social care in Europe.

Nordic Interprofessional Network (NIPNET)

Nordic Interprofessional Network (NIPNET) is an interprofessional association for Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

All Together Better Health

All Together Better Health is the leading global interprofessional practice and education conference. The conference brings together providers, health system executives, educators, policymakers, and healthcare industry leaders to advance interprofessionalism. Previous conferences in the All Together Better Health series have been held in in Kobe, Japan; Sydney, Australia; Stockholm, Sweden; London, England; and Vancouver, British Columbia.

Collaborating Across Borders (CAB)

Collaborating Across Borders (CAB) is the premier Canada-United States joint conference, co-hosted with the American Interprofessional Health Collaborative (AIHC) and the Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative (CIHC). The conference series were launched in 2007 as an interprofessional venue where educators, clinicians, researchers, policy makers and students on both sides of the border can engaged in rich and productive dialogue regarding interprofessional education, practice and research. The conference series is held biennially and travels between the United States and Canada. The conferences held include: University of Minnesota, 2007; Dalhousie University, 2009; University of Arizona, 2011; Vancouver, British Columbia, 2013 and upcoming, Virginia Tech University, Fall 2015.

Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education (CAIPE)

Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education (CAIPE) was founded in 1987 in the UK. CAIPE is dedicated to the promotion and development of interprofessional education (IPE) with and through its individual and corporate members.

Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative (CIHC)

Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative (CIHC) was founded and funded in 2006 by Health Canada. CIHC is now a federal, not-for-profit organization that provides health providers, teams and organizations with the resources and tools needed to apply an interprofessional, patient-centered and collaborative approach to healthcare.

American Interprofessional Health Collaborative

American Interprofessional Health Collaborative was founded in 2007. This US organization transcends boundaries to transform learning, policies, practices, and scholarship toward an improved system of health and wellness for individual patients, communities, and populations.

National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education

National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education was founded in 2013 with a Health Resources and Services Administration Cooperative Agreement Award at the University of Minnesota. The National Center is the designated US center to provide leadership, scholarship, evidence, coordination and national visibility to advance interprofessional education and practice as a viable and efficient health care delivery model.

Learning Resources

Competencies and Frameworks

Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative

Canada: Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative (2010). A National Interprofessional Competency Framework. Univeristy of British Columbia, Vancouver BC. View the competencies document (PDF).

Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel

United States: Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel (2011). Core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Report of an expert panel (PDF). Washington, D.C.: Interprofessional Education Collaborative.

Values/Ethics in Interprofessional Education

  • D’Amour, D & Oandasan, I (2005). Interprofessionality as the field of interprofessional practice and interprofessional education: An emerging concept. Journal of Interprofessional Care. May. S1, 8-20. PMID:16096142
  • Jensen GM, Royeen CB, Purtilo RB. Interprofessional ethics in rehabilitation: The dreamcatcher journey. Journal of Allied Health 39(3): 246-250, 2010.

Codes of Ethics

Roles and Responsibilities

Interprofessional Communication

Teams/ Teamwork

  • Barrett, J, Gifford, C, & Morey, J, Risser, D, & Salisbury, M (2001). Enhancing patient safety through teamwork training. Healthcare Risk Management, 21(4), 57-65. PMID:11729499
  • Fitzgerald A, Davison G. Innovative health care delivery teams: learning to be a team player is as important as learning other specialized skills. J Health Organ Manag. 2008; 22(2): 129-46. PMID:18700524
  • Guise JM, Deering SH, Kanki BG, Osterweil P, Li H, Mori M, & Lowe, NK. (2008). Validation of a tool to measure clinical teamwork. Simulation in Healthcare. 2008; 3:217–223. PMID:19088666
  • Hamilton SS, Yuan BJ, Lachman, N, Hellyer, NJ, Krause, DA, Holllman, JH, Youdas, JW, & Pawlina, W. Interprofessional education in gross anatomy: experience with first-year medical and physical therapy students at Mayo Clinic. Anat Sci Educ. 2008; 1(6): 258-63. PMID:19109855
  • Hammick M, Olckers L, et al. (2009). Learning in interprofessional teams: AMEE Guide no 38 Medical Teacher. 2009; 31(1): 1-12. PMID:19253148
  • Mindtools.com (2011). Forming, storming, norming and performing: Understanding the Stages of Team Formation
  • U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) (2009). TeamSTEPPS: National Implementation. Retrieved from Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Past Activities

Annual Reports

Community Health Fairs

Each year Georgia Southern University students and faculty from various disciplines in the Waters College of Health Professions help bridge wellness and the community by organizing community health fairs at various locations in Chatham County. Explore past health fairs.

MLS/Sports Medicine Collaboration

Since 2017, the Sports Medicine program and Medical Laboratory Science program have worked together to ensure students have the skills necessary to successfully conduct their research. In January 2020, Charlotte Bates and Amy Chall of the Medical Laboratory Science program along with Greg Grosicki of the Sports Medicine program continued this collaboration. Seven sports medicine graduate students attended a training session where three medical laboratory science students, assisted by Bates and Chall, demonstrated how to analyze blood serum for various biochemical markers.

Last updated: 3/29/2022

Clinical Internship/Practicum Experience Update

Many of the clinical programs offered by the Waters College of Health Professions require a clinical internship or practicum experience to fulfill degree requirements.  Pursuant to the University's legal agreements, participants in clinical experiences are required to abide by the workplace rules of the clinical site. The University is aware of recent federal requirements that would mandate vaccination against COVID-19 for those working in certain settings, including health care. At this time, we expect that these new requirements may significantly impact our ability to locate a placement for students who remain unvaccinated. As always, WCHP will continue to make every effort to place students at clinical sites. However, please be aware that we may be unable to locate a site to accept unvaccinated students, which may cause a delay or inability to progress and complete the program of study.

Waters College of Health Professions • chp@georgiasouthern.edu

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