Realizing potential: improving interdisciplinary professional/paraprofessional health care teams in Canada's northern aboriginal communities through education.

To address a shortage of health professional human resources and to overcome cultural barriers, the interdisciplinary health care teams practicing in most northern Canadian aboriginal communities include a number of paraprofessionals recruited locally. This model has great potential to fill service gaps in many rural contexts; there are challenges, however. Drawing from an extensive program of research in indigenous communities in the northwestern part of the Province of Ontario, we identify factors fundamental to effective team functioning: members' clarity about their own and others' roles, appreciation of their respective 'equal but different' knowledge bases, and confidence in one another's competence. We argue for an extension of the information on interdisciplinary practice included in health science education programs to address these issues, thereby enhancing the utility of paraprofessionals within the health human resource mix in rural areas.