A systematic review of interprofessional education

This article reports the process and outcomes of a systematic review of the evidence base for the effectiveness of interprofessional education, conducted using the guidelines for systematic review developed by the Cochrane Collaboration, whose function is described. Electronic databases (Medline and CINAHL) were searched using a combination of terms for rigorous study designs and for interprofessional education. We found 552 articles indexed with these terms from CINAHL and 510 from Medline. Two researchers reviewed each abstract independently. In total, the reviewers selected 39 articles from Medline and 44 from CINAHL which, on the basis of their abstracts, appeared to meet the criteria for our specific subject and for adequacy of quantitative research method. We obtained the full texts and two reviewers read each article independently. None of these articles were eligible for inclusion in the review, most failing to meet the Cochrane Collaboration methodological criteria. We conclude that no rigorous quantitative evidence exists on the effects of interprofessional education. The interprofessional nature of the group enriched our work. Extensive debate about the contribution of different approaches to evaluation clarified that each has an important place in the long development process of health care and educational interventions and their evaluation and improvement.