Designing and developing a continuing interprofessional education model

BACKGROUND: Interprofessional education is considered as one of the approaches in educating learners in the health system that increases interprofessional collaboration and improves the quality of patient care. PURPOSE: This study sought to design an interprofessional continuing education model. METHODS: This study was conducted in three stages. In the first stage, a systematic review of literature and search of databases were conducted to identify the common models of interprofessional continuing education and to extract the elements used in these models. In the second stage, specialists in interprofessional continuing education were interviewed in relation to the features of elements derived from the first stage. In the third stage, the model of interprofessional continuing education was designed using the results of the first and second stages. RESULTS: Seven models were obtained. Five themes, including the subject of interprofessional continuing education, objectives, content, learning strategy, and evaluation strategies, were extracted from them. Specialists stated interprofessional collaboration, needs of community and learners, focus on patient, using interactive teaching methods, and feedback as the main features of these five themes. CONCLUSION: The results of this study showed that providing a framework and model regulated in interprofessional continuing education programs can help design these programs.