An interprofessional team of applicants from Clinical Psychology, Medicine, Nursing, Nutrition, Pharmacy, Physical Therapy, and Social Work (U of Regina) have been awarded the University of Saskatchewan 2010 Provost's Prize for Innovative Practice in Teaching and Learning.

Their submission, "Innovative Practice in Interprofessional Health Sciences Problem-Based Learning", met all the criteria for the Provost's Prize. The intent of the initiative was to incorporate interprofessional Problem-based Learning (iPBL) into the programs of hundreds of health professions students over several years.

Faculty from multiple Colleges and Departments have been involved in organizing modules covering a variety of health related topics (e.g., care of patients with HIV/AIDS, Palliative Care, and Aboriginal Health and Healing). The implementation of the program over the years has resulted in high gains in students' knowledge and enjoyment and an appreciation of the interprofessional aspects of the innovative iPBL modules. The innovation has demonstrated involvement by a large number of faculty and staff from several health professions programs, a strong commitment to teaching and learning over nearly 10 years, and a very positive impact on student learning and student learning experiences. The Interprofessional Problem-Based Learning Team submission reflects the emphasis this group of health professionals places on teaching and learning and their commitment to initiate innovative programs that support student learning.

Current faculty contributors include:  Margaret Crossley and Megan O'Connell (Clinical Psychology), Marcel D'Eon and Nora McKee (Medicine), Peggy MacLeod, Pat Wall and Darlene scott (Nursing), Doreen Walker (Nutrition), Jane Cassidy (Pharmacy), Arlis McQuarrie and Peggy Proctor (Physical Therapy), Erin Beckwell and Darlene Chalmers (U of R Social Work).

iPBL is a small group case study approach that presents a situation (problem) to learners for which, by design, they are generally unprepared. This format encourages the students collectively to identify and then seek out knowledge to address the case before them. Students also learn from each other and are both teachers and learners in this mutually supportive and cooperative process. PBL has been used in medical education since being introduced at McMaster school of medicine in the early 1970's. Since then it has been adopted by many health professions schools across the globe. Our PBL groups have the added advantage of being interprofessional, and are thus termed iPBL, with interprofessional collaboration and learning as an explicit goal.

A particular strength of iPBL compared to case-based learning is its relative ease to incorporate into multiple curricula across the health science professions. All students enter the process generally unprepared, but they learn between sessions from their own explorations and investigations and during the sessions from each other. It is not necessary, as it is for case-based discussions, that all students have been taught the concepts and principles needed to successfully contend with the problematic aspects of the iPBL case. This eliminates the need for complex curricular coordination of content knowledge. The benefits of PBL have been and continue to be the subject of intense scrutiny (with somewhat equivocal results) however extensive evaluation of iPBL is absent in the literature. Rare are articles describing iPBL implementation and research on a scale that we have here at the U of S. That makes the research we conduct (and the papers we have published) that much more unique.

PBL is not used as a regular approach to curriculum delivery in any of the health science colleges. To our knowledge no program on campus employs PBL in any sustained way. The use of PBL in itself is very unusual here at the U of S. Furthermore, very few institutions world-wide employ the interprofessional format of PBL that we do here. Though we may not have been the first on the planet to pilot iPBL we are clearly world leaders as a search of the literature will attest.