Advancing Interprofessional Education
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We’re pleased to join the following organizations to advance IPE:
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CSWE is committed to advancing interprofessional education (IPE) to enable effective collaborative practice and improve health outcomes for all communities. CSWE's Advancing Interprofessional Education initiative promotes the latest IPE resources, partnership and collaboration opportunities, publications, events, and awards.
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What Is Interprofessional Education?
The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) is a proud member of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC), a national partnership dedicated to advancing interprofessional learning and collaboration across health professions.
"Interprofessional education (IPE) occurs when students from two or more professions learn about, from, and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes. Once students understand how to work interprofessionally, they are ready to enter the workplace as a member of the collaborative practice team. This is a key step in moving health systems from fragmentation to a position of strength.”
IPE prepares future professionals disciplines, including social work, nursing, pharmacy, medicine, public health, and many more fields, to work together as cohesive, team-based collaborative practitioners.
IPE is foundational to preparing students for collaborative, person-centered practice, especially in today’s increasingly complex and interdisciplinary environments.
Source: World Health Organization (WHO).
IPEC Core Competencies
To guide the development and integration of interprofessional learning, IPEC released the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice: Version 3 (2023).
The 2023 IPEC competencies builds upon preceding versions and includes significant updates and improvements to the previous edition released in 2016. To support users, the IPEC Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice: Version 3 contains a compendium of materials:
- A brief history of IPEC (Appendix A) detailing collective milestones from 2009 to the present day.
- A summary of IPEC programs, projects, and resources (Appendix B).
- An expanded and revised glossary of terms (Appendix C) with 40 operational terms adopted throughout the 2023 update.
- A corresponding comparison guide (Appendix D) that provides crosswalk tools to efficiently compare the differences between the second and third versions.
Source: IPEC
Version 3 of the the IPEC Competencies also integrate new considerations around equity, diversity, inclusion, and the evolving landscape of health and social care. These competencies serve as a shared framework across disciplines and can be used to inform curriculum design, instructional strategies, and practice-based learning experiences.
CSWE encourages social work programs and educators to use the IPEC Core Competencies to prepare students for effective, equitable, and collaborative practice across disciplines and settings.
Through its membership in IPEC, CSWE continues to support the integration of interprofessional education across social work programs and promote the essential role of social workers in collaborative care teams. IPEC has a variety of webinars and resources accesible to CSWE members.
Learn more about IPE Resources and Partnerships.