Student and faculty perspectives on community-based education as a potential platform for interprofessional education in Ghana

Interprofessional education (IPE) prepares healthcare professionals to work collaboratively in community and clinical settings. Community-based education (CBE) offers students structured opportunities for community-based learning. International evidence suggests that community-based education can foster interprofessional learning, but little is known about how already-established community-based education programmes are experienced as platforms for interprofessional education in health professions education in Ghana. This study explored the perceptions, challenges, and opportunities associated with using two community-based education programmes at the University for Development Studies (UDS) as potential platforms for interprofessional education among health professions students and faculty. This qualitative descriptive study was underpinned by an interpretivist paradigm. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive quota sample of 20 final-year health professions students and 10 faculty members, drawn from five professions (medicine, nursing, midwifery, nutrition, and pharmacy) at UDS, who had experience of the Third Trimester Field Practical Programme (TTFPP) or the Community-Based Education and Service (COBES) programme. Interviews were conducted by the first author, audio-recorded, and transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed using team-based (codebook) thematic analysis with the aid of NVivo (Version 13), and reporting followed the COREQ guideline. Thirty participants took part (10 faculty members and 20 students from medicine, nursing, midwifery, nutrition, and pharmacy). Participants generally described IPE as supporting teamwork, collaboration, and communication in healthcare delivery, and viewed CBE as a valuable forum in which interprofessional learning could occur through authentic community experience. Interprofessional contact within these programmes, however, was largely unplanned and informal rather than deliberately structured. Five themes captured participants’ accounts: understanding and value of IPE; understanding and value of CBE; belief in CBE as a platform for IPE; implementation barriers (communication difficulties, organisational and resource constraints, inadequate supervision, professional hierarchy, and lack of planning and scheduling); and improvement strategies and opportunities. Health professions students and faculty at UDS perceived existing CBE programmes as having potential to support interprofessional education through shared community engagement and experiential learning. Realising this potential is likely to require intentional curricular integration, institutional support, structured supervision, and formalised interprofessional activities.