ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the pressing need to educate for collaboration in primary and community settings. It considers the professional roles now emerging within this setting and discusses opportunities as well as the tensions involved in learning to collaborate. Education has been positioned centre stage as the mechanism that supports collaborative learning: ‘It represents the principal lever for promoting collaborative values amongst future healthcare professionals’. Traditional approaches to professional education in healthcare are being challenged to prepare practitioners to work collaboratively and flexibly across professional boundaries as health systems adapt to emergent population healthcare needs. The complexity of contemporary clinical practice situated within systems that are changing rapidly – socially, culturally and structurally – affects professional education. As educators develop expertise in designing collaborative education in response to shifting contextual affordances, it is possible that fluid hybrid professionals become the ‘valued’ professional currency.
