The project of Education Interprofessional (EIP) of the Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy and Nutrition of the University of Navarra has received the award for the best internship professor that submission the Lilly Foundation-Universidad Complutense de Madrid to proposal of the students. This is the second consecutive year that this recognition has been awarded to the academic center, after last year it was received by Professor Leire Arbea, coordinator of project and director of the Medical Education Unit of the School of Medicine, for her work in the development of the professional identity of the students.

"The patient-centered healthcare attendance is the core topic for a humane care to the person and his or her family. For this reason, the interprofessional Education is fundamental to guarantee integrated learning for students of Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy, who will practice professional work together," explains Dr. Arbea.

Thus, the University of Navarra's EIP project aims to provide students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to work together as a team, emphasizing knowledge and respect for roles, conflict resolution and interprofessional communication. "Currently, the Education of different health professionals is segmented and ignores the social benefit of interprofessional work . The result is training of graduates in different disciplines who do not recognize the roles of other professionals, lacking in communication and with limited technical approaches," notes Arbea. "Therefore, we believe that our responsibility as a University is to prepare all our students to achieve quality healthcare."

Learning professor, new subjects and innovative methodologies

To this end, the professors involved in project have jointly designed a project professor that uses new methodologies so that students can work on different competencies. "We have designed three elective subjects that are taught in consecutive courses in which students from different Schools, jointly, sharing classroom and teachers, learn to work collaboratively thinking about the patient," explains Guadalupe Beitia, professor at School of Pharmacy and Nutrition.

For Virginia La Rosa, professor of Nursing, "the interdisciplinary work teaches that team performance depends not only on the performance of the individual but also on that of the group", she says, so much of the effort professor has consisted of applying different methodologies to each of the objectives of project. "We work with problem-based learning, the case method or simulation, which provides students with a safe and controlled environment to learn from their own experience," he adds. Above all, "we think that the interdisciplinary work is decisive for person-centered care and its learning is still all about challenge".

The project of EIP has generated, consequently, academic knowledge on work interfacultative that has resulted in two articles recently published in the Revista Española de Education Médica.

For more information:

• The Education interprofessional at university: challenges and opportunities

• Education interprofessional: a proposal of the University of Navarre