Quite a few people in the Netherlands depend on medication, with around 11 million people taking medicines regularly. Obviously, these should be safe to use. Collaboration between the various professionals involved is vital in this respect. The special research group Interprofessional Collaboration & Medication Safety focuses on this interprofessional collaboration.
How does interprofessional collaboration take place in practice? How is medication prescribed? How do medical professionals arrive at therapeutic decisions? Under the leadership of endowed professor Jelle Tichelaar, the research group investigates these and other questions. The research group is the result of a partnership between Amsterdam UMC and Inholland.
The special research group Interprofessional Collaboration & Medication Safety is an example of the exchange of knowledge between students of various degree programmes, such as Advanced Nursing Practice and Physician Assistant at Inholland, Medicine at VU Amsterdam and various Pharmacy programmes. The research group has close ties to the professional field and focuses on addressing current social issues.
Following the extension of the legal authority to prescribe medication, all graduates from the degree programmes mentioned above will be authorised to do so. As a result, the medication policy for a specific patient will become the responsibility of multiple carers. This will require interprofessional collaboration – not just between prescribers, but also between pharmacists and nurses.
In current practice, this is not always the case. Professionals do work together, but not in an interdisciplinary way: they look at a patient’s case one by one and do not coordinate to draw up an integrated policy.
When training the professionals of the future, we focus on the interprofessional collaboration that is required. In fact, VU Amsterdam and Inholland students have already teamed up successfully in student outpatient clinics for real-life patients and will continue to do so. This is their introduction to interprofessional practice.
The special research group Interprofessional Collaboration & Medication Safety is another step forward in the partnership between Amsterdam UMC and Inholland. It opens up new opportunities to promote interprofessional collaboration.
Furthermore, we are working with various other Dutch universities, such as Amsterdam UMC, UMCG, Maastricht University and Radboud UMC, and with various universities abroad, such as the ones in Zagreb, Brasov, Lisbon and Bologna, in the Erasmus+ project Planetary Health Education in Prescribing. The special research group also cooperates with the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM).
If you are interested in working with us, please contact Jelle Tichelaar.
