Core Competencies for Health Care Professionals: What Medicine, Nursing, Occupational Therapy, and Physiotherapy Share

Journal of Allied Health, Summer 2006 by Verma, Sarita, Paterson, Margo, Medves, Jennifer

Why is It Necessary to Propose a Harmonized Competency Model for Health Care Professionals?

A new competency model that is interprofessional and harmonizes the mutual attributes for those in health care teams is necessary because the health care environment is changing at an unprecedented rate. These changes require health care professionals to add significant value and to do so quickly. Barr12 determined that the "introduction of a new model for interprofessional education is arguably overdue." He established the need for "common, complementary, and collaborative competencies" and further suggested that the call for interprofessional education arose from the need to "resolve misunderstandings, overcome prejudice and negative stereotyping, improve communication, and acquire collaborative competencies."

A common understanding of terms is required beyond the care of patients-indeed even before care is introduced-and this happens in the prelicensure and postlicensure educational environment. The next step would be to develop curricula that allow learners to be educated together so that they can work together. An understanding of the core competencies then allows the learners to understand the different stages of working toward collaborative practice. These skills can be defined into six sequential stages:

1. Communication

2. Consultation

3. Cooperation

4. Coordination

5. Collaboration

6. Collaborative practice

A "harmonization process" that creates a "first of its kind'" model (Table 1 ) of shared competencies contributes to the general and scientific knowledge of interprofessional education in several ways. It represents a unique set of descriptors in one place that are comparable on the horizontal plane and can facilitate cross-pollination between the four professions outlined in Table 1-and indeed can be extrapolated to other regulated health professions as well. It is an excellent springboard for discussion, goal-setting, and the development of shared characteristics for evaluation both "within" and "across" the health care professions. It provides comparability for credentialing bodies on standards or maintenance of competence and facilitates a mutual understanding of expectations, thereby building credibility that traverses the health care hierarchy. Specific uses of the model are planned and will include focus group deliberations about common roles in teams, the development of a competency-based evaluation tool in interprofessional education, and a road-map for the evolution of competency-based interprofessional education curricula in health care-all innovations in interprofessional education.

Conclusion

The role of the health care professional in medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, and physiotherapy is constantly evolving. Considering the expanding technology, as well as its changing accreditation, patient safety, and legislative issues, the responsibilities of a health care professional are in a constant state of development.

In an effort to identify consistent professional standards that can be interchangeably taught and evaluated in interprofessional educational programs, the authors defined the shared core competencies for their domains with the objective of setting guidelines for professional development and coordinating curricula required in the development of an interprofessional education curriculum.