Interprofessional education

Given the challenges faced by the many different professionals who work in health and community serviccs, good collaboration bctwccn them might be assumed, if only for mutual support. It is, of course, often achicvcd, but daily experience and systematic studies alike suggest that this is not always so. For instance, a primary care study involving pairs of general practitioners and district nurses, from a national sample, showed that only 20% of them were working in ‘partial’ or ‘full’ collaboration. Thcsc were the upper two levels of a five-point scale defining degrees of collaboration. In the same study the figure for pairs of general practitioners and health visitors was 11% on the same scale (Gregson et al. 1991). It is a widespread assumption that education about the work of other professions and education together can contribute to better collaboration between their members. Woodhouse & Pengelly, in a recently published book (1991), describe a 3-year experiment in education together. O n behalf of the Tavistock Institute of Marital Studies, they conducted workshops in one of the home counties for groups derived from mixcd disciplines (gencral practitioners, hcalth visitors, marriagc-guidance counsellors, probation officers and social workers). The group members were cstablishcd workers, as aware as any others of thc nccd to collaboratc. Thc workshops concentrated on marital problems. Their objcct was to study working partncrships between practitioncrs from different disciplincs and from different agcncics, alongside their capacity to rcspond to