Interprofessional Competency Frameworks in Health to Inform Curricula Development: Integrative Review

The paradigm of collaborative health care delivery drove the development of interprofessional competency frameworks (ICFs). The Train4Health project, funded by the Erasmus+ program, aims to improve healthcare students’ competencies in behaviour change support to optimize self-care in chronic diseases. As part of this project, we surveyed the landscape of ICFs in health. Our aim was to characterize ICFs in health and its translation into learning outcomes embedded in academic curricula. An integrative review was conducted between March and September 2020 based on a predefined protocol. The search was performed in EBSCO, B-On, Scopus, Web of Science and Joanna Briggs Institute databases. Four articles were eligible, describing ICFs in different domains in health, such as digital healthcare environment, simulation and genetic healthcare. Generally, ICFs were planned and developed by a committee. Students were involved in all four ICFs. These frameworks supported the development of learning outcomes-based curricula, organized in a tiered or straightforward structure, with different learning outcomes depending on their complexity and specialization level. Despite the overlap in some areas across health professions, we found only four ICFs that can guide collaborative education and are linked to learning outcomes. Pursuing this integrated approach, ideally resorting to structured scientific methods, may facilitate competencies attainment and merits further attention.