ABSTRACT
Structural changes need to be made within universities such that interprofessional education and collaboration (IPE/C) becomes a responsibility that crosses faculty jurisdictions. In communities, the patient or client is the centre of professional attention requiring care that goes beyond the skill and scope of any one profession. Notions about collaboration inform and drive IPE/C and should lead to testable hypotheses that lend credence and acceptability to the IPE/C process. A College of Health Disciplines has been developed at the University of British Columbia, which conforms to the university statute while at the same time allowing for IPE to cross traditional faculty boundaries.
The College of Health Disciplines of the University of British Columbia is not the only institution that is trying to foster collaboration between the health professions, but it is unique in its concentrated effort to work through some of the problems and to initiate some of the changes that appear to be necessary for the creation of an atmosphere in which planning, testing and eventual implementation of interprofessional educational programmes, leading to a lowering of barriers between professions, may take place (Szasz 1969). Multiprofessional education does not replace but complements the part of a curriculum concerned essentially with one particular profession (WHO Study Group 1987).
