Interprofessional education at a Brazilian public university: A document analysis

Abstract

Background: Interprofessional Education is considered a necessary approach to develop skills for collaborative work in the training of professionals in order to improve the quality of health care. The curricula are the guiding documents for training and should explain how Interprofessional Education is adopted in undergraduate health courses.

Objective: To analyze curricula of undergraduate health courses, from the perspective of Interprofessional Education, in a Brazilian public university.

Design: Qualitative study of document analysis.

Settings: Undergraduate health courses at a Brazilian public university.

Methods: 13 undergraduate health courses were analyzed. Data collection was conducted based on an adapted quality assessment script for Interprofessional Education. From the thematic content analysis, three analytical categories emerged.

Results: In the category "Curriculum organization and interprofessionality", the courses do not make free periods available in the curriculum, and each of the courses provide space for elective subjects at different times. In the category "Training guided by social reality and health needs" the courses propose training based on the health needs of patients from the Brazilian public health system. In the category "Learning for interprofessional action", the term "multiprofessional" characterizes learning for teamwork, with a discrete number of interprofessional disciplines.

Conclusions: The theoretical bases of IPE and organizational goals are necessary to establish training objectives, specific shared times, and mutual interests that are directed to interprofessionality. Interprofessional Education can be expanded from activities that already exist in the curricula of undergraduate courses.

Keywords: Curriculum; Health occupations; Interprofessional education; Interprofessional relations; Intersectoral collaboration; Qualitative research; Students.

Fig. 1

Geographic location of USP teaching units in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Sao Paulo, 2022. Source: elaborated by the authors using the Google My Maps application.