Inter-Professional Collaborative Practice

From the point of view of Naylor (2011), collaboration embodies interdisciplinary or inter-professional activities and is one of the marks and guarantees of quite a few very efficacious innovations in health care. According to her, both the outcomes of patients and care quality improve in situations where nurses collaborate as colleagues with other health care providers. The meaning of collaboration in Nursing is not far-removed from the term collaborative practice (CP), which has been identified as a favourable means of supporting health systems in a bid to improving health outcomes. Given the limited human and financial resources, collaboration is progressively more considered as essential to global health systems in order to meet multipart health needs (Mickan, et al. 2010;

2011; Frenk et al. 2010; Reeves et al. 2009, as cited in WHO, 2013). According to the World Health Organisation, Inter-professional Education (IPE) is a practice where “students from two or more professions learn [in] about, from, and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes” (WHO 2010, p. 13). IPE tears apart static and outdated curriculum in schools and enhances students’ performances. Thus, inter-professional collaborative practice is defined by a situation whereby numerous health workers from diverse professional backgrounds work collectively with patients, relations, caregivers and societies so as to provide the utmost quality of care (adapted from the World Health Organization, 2010). Strategies to support and aid health policy-makers to carry out the fundamentals of Inter-professional Education and Collaborative Practice that will assist their health systems within the context of each country’s situation is expressed in the WHO Framework for Action on Inter-professional Education and Collaborative Practice