Welcome to REIP

Regional Network for Interprofessional Education in the Americas

REIP constitutes a strategy of articulation and technical cooperation between educational institutions, professional organizations and Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education, with the objective of promoting interprofessional education and collaborative practice in health care in the Region of the Americas. REIP is one of the global leaders in promoting and developing interprofessional education and learning and a member of interprofessional.global (Global Confederation for Interprofessional Practice & Education) that includes representatives from regional and developing networks across the world.

EDITORIAL REIP

Happy New Year to all!

REIP wishes everyone an excellent 2021 with great prosperity, advances in the theme of IPE and in the development of interprofessional health teams.

We started this year with the editorial by Hugh Barr of the UK Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education (CAIPE).

Barr is one of the most notable experts on the theme of IPE & Collaborative Health Practices and together with other personalities, such as John Gilbert, Barbara Brandt and Hossein Khalili go to great lengths to contribute to the process of implementing of IPE in human resources for health policies in the region of the Americas.

Planning for the new is the title of this editorial. The executive secretary of REIP is confident that Barr's words are a breath of encouragement to continue investing in IPE and that the COVID-19 pandemic has seen the potential that this educational strategy has for achieving more collaborative and resilient health systems.

Planning for the new

Hugh Barr

Introduction

Accustomed though it is to challenge, the interprofessional movement is being overwhelmed by the pandemic: a challenge that knows no boundaries between professions, between institutions, between organisations and between nations; a challenge generating not only unprecedented demands but also unprecedented opportunities for collaboration on which our survival depends (Xirichis & Williams, 2020).

Interprofessional learning is the key to collaboration. It is the means by which professions join in common cause, pool their resources and engage with tasks beyond the capacity of any one of them alone, setting aside rivalries and differences. That is the process that we have been refining by trial and error for some 70 years, more rigorously, more systematically and more convincingly over time blending evidence from experience and from research.

All that was threatened in the UK when universities were ‘locked down’. Campuses were closed, teaching put online and learning materials reworked in haste. Interprofessional learning fell victim to the problems with which it was being called upon to engage. Yet colleagues assure me that it is proving to be the catalyst for a more creative, nuanced and expanded approach to working across boundaries (Gurbutt, 2020). Reed more