Universities preparing health professionals for the 21st century: can something new come out of the traditional establishment?

To address clinical education in chronic disease management, the University of Alberta partnered with the local health authority to develop interprofessional team placements in diabetes chronic disease management. The objectives were to determine a meaningful and sustainable approach to interprofessional team placements. Pre-licensure students from medicine, nursing, nutrition and pharmacy participated in a project-based team experience designed to increase their discipline-specific knowledge of diabetes while enhancing their team process skills. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were used to evaluate project implementation and student outcomes. The majority of students reported learning "a great deal" about the roles of other health professionals and knowledge regarding the management of diabetes from the perspective of other health disciplines. However, several key learning outcomes were not fully accomplished; to enhance student's interprofessional team skills, increase their knowledge of interprofessional team functions and learn how to modify team function in a clinical setting. Creativity concerning relevant projects, varying settings, and differing models of service delivery should be encouraged, and flexibility within the project and process is essential for self-directed learning of student teams. New models of interprofessional clinical education, such as the chronic disease management model used in this study, have potential, if supported by the shift in health science programs culture.