Interprofessional learning to integrate care: organic strategic and systemic responses for change.

Abstract

In the first of three articles, we scanned global and national sources to help understand the concept and scope of integrated care. New policy directives seek closer working relationships between health and social care systems and practitioners to tackle modern challenges relating to the ageing population, poverty, disadvantage, and mental health. We identified that the practitioner workforce has not been fully considered or prepared for large shifts in working practices, often bringing new practitioners' roles to address local needs in newly managed interprofessional working systems for integrated care. In this second article, we consider the major themes identified by our review of integrated care policy to explore their implications for interprofessional learning, drawing on developmental pathways for interprofessional education from organic to strategic and systemic responses, to ask in what ways we will need to prepare our learners for these new ways of delivering integrated care.