Becoming Interprofessional: A Longitudinal Study of Professional and Interprofessional Identity Development Across Five Health Professions

Interprofessional collaborative practice (IPC) occurs when health professions work collaboratively to improve quality of care and enhance patient outcomes. Yet myriad challenges to enacting collaborative practice exist. Interprofessional education for collaborative practice (IPECP) is foundational for promoting collaboration among health professions, yet there is a gap in understanding how students perceive their readiness for IPC and how early socialization experiences may contribute to developing a dual-uni-professional and interprofessional-identity. This study seeks to understand how new practitioners perceive and experience IPC upon entry to practice, and identify individual and systemic factors that facilitate and impede dual identity development. An interpretive, narrative methodology was used to understand the IPC and early professional practice experiences of 24 individuals from a longitudinal study of five health professions. Facilitators to interprofessional identity development included exposure to/working with interprofessional teams, settings, role models, and directly experiencing benefits of collaborative practice during patient care. Impediments include settings and situations where professional stereotyping and hierarchies were reinforced by the dominant uni-professional culture of work environments. Interprofessional socialization and identity development are contingent on exposure to interprofessional role models and settings. Healthcare professionals' dual identity development begins in pre-licensure IPECP but is shaped by socialization experiences within practice. Healthcare institutions need to provide nourishing collaborative environments (time, settings, and contexts) that foster interprofessional collaboration and behaviors and empower dual identity formation. Post-licensure IPECP for healthcare professionals to continue to learn with, from, and about one another in practice is essential for collaborative interprofessional healthcare teams/systems.