# Teaching/learning formats and cross-cutting issues for the design of interprofessional education for healthcare professions – literature review and analysis of training and examination regulations

## TL;DR

This paper reviews teaching methods and cross-cutting topics for interprofessional healthcare education in Germany, highlighting gaps and effective strategies.

## Contribution

The study identifies common cross-cutting topics and teaching formats for interprofessional healthcare education in Germany, revealing current limitations.

## Key findings

- Counselling, quality assurance, and structured care process are the most common cross-cutting topics in interprofessional healthcare education.
- Case-based learning, interprofessional group work, and simulation are recommended teaching methods for these topics.
- Observation-based and hands-on learning are rarely used, and few healthcare professions participate in interprofessional education.

## Abstract

Educational institutions in Germany are facing the challenge of providing healthcare professionals with the skills they need to collaborate interprofessionally. Appropriate skills can be acquired through suitable teaching/learning formats and cross-cutting topics. However, there is a lack of empirical results on the design of appropriate teaching/learning formats in order to apply the cross-cutting topics effectively in as many healthcare professions as possible.

An integrative literature review on suitable teaching/learning formats was carried out in which 21 titles were analysed and presented in a table. The typology according to Sottas et al. was used as a deductive evaluation framework. In order to identify cross-cutting issues, an analysis of the training and examination regulations for healthcare professions in Germany was carried out, with an evaluation using frequency counts.

The three most common cross-cutting topics are counselling, quality assurance and the structured care process. The topics are to be taught using methods such as case-based and problem-oriented learning, interprofessional group work or simulation. The debriefing of interprofessional teaching/learning formats is highly relevant.

Interprofessional teaching for healthcare professions rarely takes place in the form of observation-based and hands-on learning in Germany. In addition, only a few healthcare professions are usually involved in interprofessional teaching and learning formats. Both of these factors impede the teaching of complex interprofessional skills.