Interprofessional Conversations in Continuing Education

The continually evolving landscape of health care has created both demand and increased opportunity for interprofessional collaboration of behavioral and medical health care teams. In turn, there is an ongoing need for practitioners to understand how to best engage in patient-centered care that includes the range of professions required for optimizing patient outcomes (Auld, 2017). This article compares current practices across health care professions for the purpose of identifying mutually agreeable directions that move interprofessional collaboration forward. The coauthors each provide their insights to their respective professions of psychology, nursing, medicine, and pharmacy by way of responses to a shared set of questions about continuing education (CE) and interprofessional continuing education (IPCE). Areas that are addressed include the practical relevance of IPCE, areas of convergence and divergence, current challenges facing health care professions, anticipated changes in IPCE, components of ideal training experiences for health care professionals, the value of conversations, and future directions of interprofessional care and CE. Implications for interprofessional collaborative practice for behavioral and medical health care professionals are considered with a focus on patient care and outcomes. Public Significance Statement This article provides a distinctive contribution to the literature by cultivating conversations among behavioral and medical health care professionals in order to highlight the value of interprofessional continuing education for patient-centered care. Although the literature has grown in relation to interprofessional continuing education and training, genuine conversations among principal constituents in behavioral and medical health professions may represent a key mechanism for advancing team-based collaborative practice.