Editorial Interprofessional and Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Moving Forward

Over the past few years, there has been increasing emphasis on the importance of interprofessional collab-oration in practice, research, and health policy. It has become de rigueur among government and private fun-ders to require such partnerships in applications from potential grantees. Examples of organizational efforts to enhance interprofessional education abound. In 2009, six national organizations representing schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing, osteopathic medicine, phar-macy, and public health “formed a collaborative to pro-mote and encourage constituent efforts that would advance substantive interprofessional learning experi-ences to help prepare future clinicians for team-based care of patients ” (Interprofessional Collaborative Practice [ICP], 2011, p. 1). Their work culminated in a national conference and a report on core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice (ICP, 2011). In 2012, the Center for Applied Research in Philadelphia, in conjunction with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, convened a meeting of 12 nurse and physician leaders “to seek a consensus document on interprofessional collaboration. ” Although they were unable to reach consensus, they identified “lessons learned ” for next steps. This included that “interprofessional collaboration is already occurring on the ground—the problem is at the organizational level” (Jablow, 2013, p. 1). The federal government’s support for interprofes-sional practice and education collaboration resulted i