Creating a Collaborative Care Curriculum Framework

Background: A faculty wide approach to curriculum design is required to ensure students within all health professional courses are provided with relevant interprofessional education opportunities across their course of study. Within the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Monash University, Australia, a Collaborative Care Curriculum Framework was developed to detail the learning outcomes for collaborative care for pre-registration students.
Methods: A six-stage process was undertaken. A working group was established, and existing literature, interprofessional frameworks and accreditation documents were analysed, and themes extracted. Consensus was obtained across the multiple professions (twelve in our context), regarding the main themes and student learning outcomes. Multi-media was engaged to facilitate the communication of the framework across the faculty.
Discussion: Keys to successful development of the framework included reference to profession-specific accreditation requirements, incorporating patient and student perspectives and working with multi-media to produce clear professional documents. The outcome of the six-stage structured process was the establishment of an agreed framework for use across professions when planning interprofessional curriculum. Subsequent benefits of developing the framework include a shared language, vision and priorities for the development of new interprofessional curriculum activities.
Conclusion: Each stage of framework development is outlined to allow others to replicate in their local context. The process undertaken, and the challenges encountered are described, in addition to the subsequent benefits for the faculty and students.