Delegates query benefits of interprofessional training

“An older woman spent all morning in a day centre trying
to find someone who could help fix her fire but none of the staff
knew who to contact.”

This example was used to show the problems of interprofessional
boundaries by Brenda Gillies from the University of Dundee.

Gillies and her colleagues from the Scottish Institute for
Excellence in Social Work Education have been pioneering a project
to improve interprofessional learning.

She said that the project had been well received and increased
the knowledge of other professions. But she added that there was no
adequate evidence that interprofessional training improved social
work.

But delegates queried the benefits of the training. One teacher
said that her students were resistant to work with other health
professionals because “nurses have different values from
us”. Another said that instead of concentrating on the work
of other professionals, social workers should be concentrating on
their own values and training.