Collaboration is key for success across multiple industries, including healthcare settings. In order to prepare students for contemporary and future healthcare landscapes, there is scope for higher education to embrace development of a range of capabilities for collaboration, including those that might be less visible and hard to measure. Using practice theories as a lens, this research explored collaboration in healthcare landscapes as ‘collaborative practice.’ Our research focussed on the preparation of allied health students for collaborative practice. As key contributors to collaborative models of healthcare, allied health professionals comprise a wide range of health professions, come from diverse origins and have a relatively flat hierarchical structure. This qualitative research informed by philosophical hermeneutics explored perceptions of allied health academics and students as people deeply entrenched in higher education and its role in enhancing employability. Our research found that capabilities for allied health collaborative practice are currently being deliberately and serendipitously developed. Deliberate development occurred across teaching strategies of case and problem-based learning and simulation-based scenarios. Serendipitous development largely occurred as part of work integrated learning (WIL). Use of practice theories highlighted how capabilities for collaborative practice, including the less-visible capabilities, can be more intentionally developed in allied health higher education. Educators and WIL supervisors are invited to reflect on their own practice and the roles they play in intentionally developing these capabilities with and for students. Further, including capabilities for collaborative practice as part of allied health registration and practice thresholds may help bring them into focus.
Paton et al. (Thu,) studied this question.