AN INTERPROFESSIONAL APPROACH AS A NEW LEARNING METHOD TO STRENGTHEN COMPETENCY IN MEDICAL DOCTOR’S EDUCATION: LESSON LEARNT FROM INDONESIA

In spite of satisfying achievement on medical doctor competency, there is growing awareness from the Indonesian ministry of national health on the collaborative capability of medical doctors with other medical-related professions to provide optimal patient care. This condition stems from the ill-defined learning methods in the past that failed to see the equal essentiality of interprofessional approach to satisfy the patient demand for excellent service of health care. Another problem perhaps in conjunction with limitation of certain universities to have other related medical study programs which enable the interprofessional approach for the medical doctor students. Owing to this condition, Brawijaya University (BU) has initiated recently to implement the interprofessional approach (IA) as a new learning method for medical doctor education in collaboration with other study programs that adhere to the faculty of medicine, i.e. dentistry, pharmacy, nutrition and dietatics, nursing and mid-wifery. The execution of IA learning method in BU consists of three stages; first, introduction to the nature of IA such as what and why we need IA, objectives, goals and required competency of students at the end of second semester course work; second, execution of IA on patient care by simulation and role playing learning method with other professions at diverse scenarios; and third, at professional stage IA involves three departments: internist, psychiatry, and obsetric and gynecology that focuses on patient safety. From the observation and evaluation using an open-ended questionnaire distributed randomly at the beginning and the end of the program, there is positive response on IA as a new learning method among the respondents particularly on the collaborative ability with other professions that increased safety of the patient. This paper describes the current experiences of BU on IA and the likely future implementation of this learning method in the study program of medical doctor education throughout Indonesia and perhaps other countries for satisfying patient care demand.