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Introduces a collection of papers that focus on such topics as collaboration in health services planning, shared culture in community-based mental health, interagency cooperation in health and social services in mental health, the role of volunteers in community partnerships, issues facing workers trying to implement workplace change, and the use of professional development for effecting organizational change. (SM)

Interprofessional collaborative practice is widely documented as a strategy to improve quality of healthcare. To develop collaborative practitioners, educators need interprofessional curricula with proper cognitive demand and methods of delivery and assessment. The University of the Western Cape in South Africa incorporated an Interprofessional Core Courses Curriculum for all undergraduate students enrolled in the health sciences faculty. The objective of this study was to analyse the curriculum content to determine its cognitive rigor. Cognitive rigor can be measured by the quantitative content analysis method using the Depth of Knowledge (DOK) framework. This approach tests whether the rigor of instructional activities and assessments is aligned with learning outcomes. The curriculum content evaluated in this study found that assessment activities were less demanding than instructional activities and infrequently aligned with learning outcomes. This approach may be useful to other educators seeking to evaluate and plan interprofessional curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article highlights the case for strengthening healthcare systems by building inter professional education (IPE) into workforce strategies. It discussed that the government's work for allied health, nursing, and social work students to learn collaborative competence and also mentions the incoming Labour Government of the century called for common learning across all health and social care professions to deliver a workforce responsive to its policies to modernize the public services.