Every healthcare profession maintains its own homogenous occupational identity and culture on account of several factors including:
1) what type of person (attitude, work ethic, life experience, personality, problem-solving strategies, values, and morals) the profession attracts
2) systemic prejudice such as sexism, classism, ableism, and racism which has historically determined and continues to determine who can study this profession. Leaders of the profession and institution typically serve on admission committees and thus decide who is allowed in and who is not
3) the shared clinical and didactic pedagogy and curricula accepted and used across programs to educate students of the profession
4) the in-group-out-group socialization of the student by current professionals, professors, clinical instructors, mentors, and piers during their education, clinical experience, and continuing into their professional practice (Hall, 2005)
Although the term ‘interprofessional’ is not new, it has relatively recently made its break as a buzzword within the world of healthcare. ‘Interprofessional’ refers to the collaboration of different healthcare professionals (including but not limited to doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, respiratory therapists, physical therapists, speech language pathologists, and social workers) in order to improve the quality of care that is provided to patients and families with increasingly complex healthcare needs (Wei et al, 2019).
The push for the integration of an interprofessional approach thus aims to address the dangers of siloed healthcare professions such as clashes of language and communication, cognitive maps, and leadership styles as well as healthcare system hierarchy. My undergraduate Bachelor of Science in Nursing program adopted an annual 3-hour interprofessional simulation program which was eye-opening yet short-lived. However, I have truly experienced the interprofessional approach during my time in the LEND program which harnesses long-term interprofessional immersion through our weekly 3-hour dialogical sessions. LEND sessions have provided me with cultural immersion of the different healthcare professions which is a truly vital element in healthcare education.
However, while the healthcare education system has begun its push for an ‘interprofessional’ approach, the term ‘interdisciplinary’ seems to remain an entity both absent from healthcare pedagogy and conflated at best. In reality, the main distinction between the two entities is that ‘interprofessional’ refers to clinical practice while ‘interdisciplinary’ refers to the educational process (Presentation plan: Team healthcare models). More specifically, ‘interdisciplinary’ is defined as the integration and synthesis of knowledge from more than one discipline (Jones, 2009).
Within the realm of higher education, this approach is more commonly known as ‘double majoring’ or ‘minoring’ and remains relatively absent from healthcare majors. The culture within healthcare programs reproduces the mythical rhetoric that healthcare programs themselves are simply too rigorous and challenging to simultaneously double major. Having gone through a Bachelor of Science in Nursing Program with a double major in Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, I cannot imagine pursuing a degree in healthcare without simultaneously challenging my mind with the critical thinking that is demanded from the humanities. Considering the aforementioned siloed nature of the healthcare field, a combination of interprofessional and interdisciplinary work is central to advancing the field of healthcare. Interdisciplinary work quite literally changes the way you think and process information and therefore diversifies our healthcare professions.
I would like to debunk some of the myths which serve as barriers that drive healthcare students away from interdisciplinary studies:
1) Double majoring does not mean taking double the number of classes or doing double the amount of work: when a student double majors, there are many overlapping requirements. For example, healthcare students are still required to take GE’s and electives and if they select all of their GE’s/electives from their double major of choice, this knocks out two birds with one stone.
2) You will not be responsible for making the plan yourself: you will have the help of both academic advisors to organize the best and most efficient individual plan for you.
3) Although each program has a list of courses eligible for GE credits, many will allow you to petition why another course should fulfill your respective course requirement.
I would not have had the opportunity to learn about disability, ableism, or identity-based oppression if it weren’t for double majoring in the humanities during my undergraduate nursing degree. An interdisciplinary approach is just as vital as an interprofessional approach for advancing the healthcare field through fostering diverse, creative innovators and critical thinkers. LEND and Disability Studies in general is perhaps one of the strongest proponents for interdisciplinary studies as DS is recognized as an interdisciplinary field which applies critical disability theory to the advancement of other disciplines and the lives of disabled people. Being an interdisciplinary thinker is about pushing the boundaries and confines of your discipline’s culture to progress the field. We need to uproot the myth of infeasibility and rather promote interdisciplinarity within healthcare if we are to see progress in healthcare.
References:
Jones, C. (2009). Interdisciplinary approach - Advantages, disadvantages, and the future benefits of interdisciplinary studies. ESSAI, 7(26). http://dc.cod.edu/essai/vol7/iss1/26
Hall, P. (2005). Interprofessional teamwork: Professional cultures as barriers. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 19(1), 188-196. https://doi.org/10.1080/13561820500081745
Presentation plan: Team healthcare models. Columbia Projects, 215-218. http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/sl2/pdf/glossary.pdf
