Developing health and social care staff to work interprofessionally for the benefit of service users
Prof. Jan Illing with the support of TEAMCARE consortium
This project is focused on developing and implementing an inTerprofessional EuropeAn curriculuM for health and social Care staff: developing a speciAlist in personalized useR-centered carE in the community: TEAMCARE.
Teamcare is an Erasmus Plus project with 12 European partners, aimed at training community-based health and social care staff to work collaboratively for the benefit of service users.
Currently, health and social care staff largely work and deliver care separately. This leads to frustration for service users, as care is disjointed and lacking in continuity. Yet, there are many benefits to teamworking. It improves medical diagnosis, healthcare outcomes, reduces mortality, reduces morbidity and readmission rates. Teamwork also reduces drug errors and drug reactions. There are also staff benefits such as increased job satisfaction and reduced workloads.
This project aims to bring community-based health and social care staff together to work more effectively in interprofessional teams. Teamcare will train staff to understand each other’s roles, communicate effectively, learn about the different services available and how to collaborate to ensure service users receive integrated care through shared decision making with service users and carers.
The 12 partners started work in October 2023 to with service users and used focus groups to understand the problem from their perspective. There was also an EU-wide contextual analysis; a review of the international literature and an e-Delphi study to identify the core competences, and articulate the knowledge, skills and behaviours needed to support the development of a community-based specialist in interprofessional working.
These stages informed the development of the Integrated Framework of Competences (IFC), which have been used as a basis for the European Curriculum (in compliance with EQF descriptors and ECVET and micro-credential approach). The European Curriculum is targeted at health and social care staff giving them the knowledge and skills to collaborate interprofessionally in the community.
The EU curriculum will be piloted in Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Poland. Each pilot site will localise it to fit to each context. To ensure that the educational and training activities targeted at health, and social care staff reach and benefit service users an evidenced based model, developed for the UK Department of Health and Social Care, called the “Four-Step Model” will be followed (Illing et al. 2018). This model starts with identifying the problem, developing the needed education, ensuring the right staff are trained and are supported to bring this training back to their workplace and implement it. It involves ongoing monitoring to ensure the needed behaviour changes are made in practice (from siloed working to teams) and that service user benefits are measured.
The pilot courses are scheduled to start in September 2025 and will be delivered over 6-8 months with online and in-person team sessions, as well as work-based learning and offer micro-credentials by each host university. In addition, an open online Community of Inquiry (CoI) platform will be developed to access the online learning resources and facilitate collaboration with other participants in their daily professional practice and share practice. The Integrated Framework of Competences can be downloaded HERE