Abstract

Interprofessional education (IPE) is often mandated by health and social care regulatory bodies as a critical strategy in preparing students for professional practice. The World Health Organisation identifies IPE as a global priority for addressing healthcare challenges. However delivering IPE across multiple disciplines and courses has its challenges. (Howard and McCoyd, 2023; Patel, Begum and Kayyali, 2016).

At the University of Lancashire, our cross-institutional leadership team of 22 academics ( Gillaspy et al 2025) has successfully embedded IPE across more than 20 health and social care courses.. Our leadership and facilitation team have co-designed and delivered over 70 IPE sessions across three geographically dispersed campuses reaching more than 3,000 students over the academic year. Bringing learners from different professional backgrounds together to address complex clinical problems, IPE emphasizes collaboration, communication and mutual recognition (Al-Hassan 2026) The program is structured to support students’ progression from learning alongside each other, to learning about each other’s roles and professions, and finally learning from each other through shared decision-making to improve patient and community care.

Our pedagogical approach draws upon experiential and heutagogical self-determined learning (Hase and Kenyon, 2000) which has been shown to develop key sector competencies such as self-efficacy, problem solving and collaborative working (Gillaspy and Vasilica, 2021). This presentation will illustrate how we have used heutagogy principles to design effective IPE learning experiences. Topics such as frailty, safeguarding, and neurodivergence are explored through innovative methods including large-scale online simulations and escape rooms. Quantitative data show statistically significant improvements in students’ perceived teamwork competencies and confidence, while qualitative feedback highlights enhanced understanding of professional roles and readiness for practice. Our model demonstrates how IPE can be sustainably embedded across curricula through strategic leadership, shared resources, and pedagogical innovation.