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Medical Education
Accreditation of Interprofessional Health Education (AIPHE)
The Accreditation of Interprofessional Health Education (AIPHE) initiative, funded by Health Canada, is a national collaborative of eight organizations that accredit pre-licensure education for six Canadian health professions: physical therapy, occupational therapy, pharmacy, social work, nursing and medicine.
The AIPHE initiative, established in the Fall of 2007, is in the second phase of its work which will end in March, 2011. This phase builds on the shared principles for accreditation of interprofessional health education (IPE) standards that were developed in phase one and will ensure the integration of IPE standards into the accreditation programs of the six participating health and social care programs.
The organizations that form the AIPHE initiative are: the Accreditation Council of Canadian Physiotherapy Academic Programs, the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists, the Canadian Council for Accreditation of Pharmacy Programs, the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing, the Canadian Association of Social Work Education, the College of Family Physicians of Canada, the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
In this phase of the project, each of the partner organizations will be involved in a range of activities that include: developing language to guide the integration of IPE accreditation standards into each accreditation program, ensuring access for their education communities to shared resources for implementation of the accreditation standards, assisting with understanding the IPE standards, providing examples of IPE evidence in education programs, and where possible in this short time frame, pilot testing the standards, revising and implementing them. The pilot testing and implementation processes are expected to run longer than this phase of the project making ongoing communication critical.
AIPHE has, and will continue to facilitate collaboration among the eight participating accrediting organizations to ensure a common approach to the IPE accreditation standards and to share lessons learned along the way. An important deliverable of the project will be an Academic Interprofessional Program Assessment tool that will guide these accreditation organizations’ surveyors as they integrate IPE assessment into their accreditation reviews.
Information sharing and consultation will be important components of this phase of the initiative. The partnering organizations will work to obtain institutional support and feedback from the universities and academic units that deliver the relevant programs and to gain perspectives on the IPE accreditation draft materials. Participation from clinical site managers, regulatory authorities, and provincial government health and post-secondary education departments will be solicited through a key stakeholder gathering to be held in November 2010. These participant organizations are critical for enabling education programs to immerse students and new graduates in collaborative, patient/client-centred care environments.
A knowledge exchange session will also be offered before the end of the project to accrediting organizations of other academic health programs so they can share in the results of this collaborative work.
