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Inter-Professional Learning (IPL) | Bradford VTS
Bradford VTS · Teaching & Learning

Inter-Professional Learning

Because patients never read the memo saying they belong to only one profession.

For Trainees, Trainers & TPDs High-impact learning in minutes Knowledge not found elsewhere
Last updated: April 2026
Inter-professional learning (IPL) is one of the most practical — and most overlooked — skills in GP training. Modern primary care is a team sport. GPs who understand how to learn with, from, and about other professions provide safer, more efficient, and more satisfying care for their patients.
Downloads & Resources

📥 Downloads

Handouts, summaries, and teaching extras — ready when you are.

path: IPL

🌐 Web Resources

A hand-picked mix of official guidance and real-world IPL resources. Because sometimes the best pearls are not hiding in the official documents.

📘 Core & Academic

🏥 GP Training & Primary Care

📚 Further Reading

Understanding IPL — The Foundations

📖 What Is Inter-Professional Learning?

"Interprofessional education occurs when students or members of two or more professions learn with, from and about each other to improve collaboration and the quality of care."
CAIPE (Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education), 2013
"Interprofessional education occurs when two or more professions learn about, from and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes."
World Health Organisation (WHO), 2010

Notice the three-part structure that both definitions share. These three words matter enormously in practice:

WITH Shared activity Learning side-by-side, doing real work together, shared cases & scenarios FROM Mutual teaching Each profession brings unique expertise that enriches others ABOUT Understanding roles Understanding what other professions do, think, and prioritise
The three core dimensions of interprofessional learning (CAIPE / WHO)

🎯 The Aims of IPL

Every IPL activity should work towards at least one of these three aims:

  • Enhance understanding of other professionals' roles and responsibilities — what do they actually do, and why?
  • Increase shared knowledge of particular clinical skills or topics — learning the same thing together but from different professional perspectives
  • Develop teamwork skills — communication, delegation, conflict resolution, leadership, and collaborative decision-making

❓ Why Does IPL Matter in General Practice?

A decade or so ago, it was mostly just the GPs who sat together to discuss "children at risk". But are they really the only people involved in safeguarding? Nowadays, a sensible safeguarding discussion includes GPs, practice nurses, health visitors, admin staff, and often a social worker. This shift — from siloed professional groups to truly collaborative teams — is exactly what IPL supports.

IPL delivers Enhanced quality of care Better patient outcomes Staff satisfaction Reduced burnout & stress Safer teams Fewer errors & near-misses Greater efficiency Less duplication of effort Continuity of care Seamless handovers Patient safety Reduced risk of harm
The six core benefits of effective interprofessional learning (IPL)
💡

Insider Tip

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan (2023) explicitly commits to expanding the multidisciplinary primary care team. This means working alongside clinical pharmacists, physician associates, paramedics, first contact physiotherapists, and social prescribers is now mainstream. Understanding what they do — and learning from them — is not a nice extra. It is part of being a modern GP.

🔀 IPL vs MPL — A Crucial Distinction

Many people confuse inter-professional learning with multi-professional learning. They are not the same thing — and knowing the difference matters for your reflective practice and your 14Fish ePortfolio entries.

FeatureMulti-Professional Learning (MPL)Inter-Professional Learning (IPL)
DefinitionTwo or more professions learning alongside each other, but separatelyTwo or more professions actively learning with, from, and about each other
InteractionPassive — you happen to be in the same roomActive — you engage with each other's knowledge and perspectives
ExampleGP and practice nurse both attend a lecture on diabetes managementGP and practice nurse jointly review a patient's diabetes care, discussing each other's contributions
Role understandingLimited — you don't necessarily learn what others doCentral — understanding other roles is part of the activity
OutcomeYou know the same facts, but not each other betterYou understand how to collaborate more effectively
Quality of IPL?❌ Does not qualify as IPL✅ This is genuine IPL
📝

For Your 14Fish ePortfolio

When logging IPL in your 14Fish ePortfolio, always describe what you learned from that profession's perspective — not just that you attended a meeting together. The reflection must demonstrate the "from and about" dimension to be educationally meaningful.

👥 The Modern Primary Care Team

Thanks to Primary Care Networks (PCNs) and NHS England's Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS), the primary care team in 2025 looks very different from five years ago. These are the people you can learn from — and about.

GP / Trainee Clinical Pharmacist Practice Nurse Paramedic / ANP Social Prescriber First-Contact Physio Mental Health Practitioner Health Visitor Practice Manager
The modern PCN primary care team — all potential IPL partners for a GP trainee
💡

Insider Tip — Make the Most of Your Placement

A half-day sitting in with your practice pharmacist will teach you more about polypharmacy, medication reviews, and deprescribing than a week of textbook reading. A morning with the health visitor will completely change how you see safeguarding. These are not nice extras — they are genuine learning gold.

The Framework — Competencies, Benefits & Barriers

🎯 The Four Core Competencies of IPL

The Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) has defined four core competency domains that IPL should develop. These align closely with the RCGP curriculum's Professional Capabilities framework.

🤝 Values & Ethics

  • Mutual respect between professions
  • Commitment to patient-centred care
  • Appreciation of diversity in roles and backgrounds
  • Shared accountability for outcomes

🗂 Roles & Responsibilities

  • Understanding what each profession is trained to do
  • Knowing the limits of your own and others' scope of practice
  • Appropriate delegation and referral within the team
  • Recognising complementary skills

🗣 Interprofessional Communication

  • Speaking each other's professional language
  • Structured handover (e.g. SBAR)
  • Seeking and giving constructive feedback across roles
  • Navigating disagreement respectfully

👥 Teams & Teamwork

  • Building effective relationships across professions
  • Shared leadership — not always the GP in charge
  • Responding to team conflict constructively
  • Collective ownership of patient outcomes

✅ The Benefits of IPL — In Detail

When professionals understand each other's roles, they refer more appropriately, communicate more clearly, and make better joint decisions. Research consistently shows that teams trained together provide safer and higher-quality care than those trained in silos. Interprofessional teams also perform better on preventive care — vaccination rates, chronic disease reviews, and cancer screening all improve in genuinely collaborative practices.

Many serious patient safety incidents involve communication failures between professions rather than clinical knowledge gaps. When teams learn together, they develop shared mental models of what safe care looks like. They are more likely to speak up across professional hierarchies when something seems wrong, and less likely to make assumptions about what "someone else" has done.

💡

The Safeguarding Example

A decade ago, GPs alone discussed "children at risk". Today, an effective safeguarding MDT brings together GPs, practice nurses, health visitors, admin staff, and social workers. Each person sees a different slice of the patient's life. Together, they see the whole picture — and that difference can save lives.

When team members understand each other's roles, they stop duplicating work. Patients are not asked the same questions four times by four different people. Tasks are delegated to the most appropriate professional. Referrals are made earlier and more accurately. This is good for patients — and it significantly reduces the burden on already-stretched GP workload.

Seamless care depends on professionals who trust and understand each other. When a practice nurse knows that the GP will follow up on a result, and the GP knows that the pharmacist has already done the medication review, care flows smoothly. IPL builds that mutual understanding and trust over time. It is the foundation of continuity across a primary care team rather than just from one individual doctor.

Evidence consistently shows that healthcare workers in genuinely collaborative teams report higher job satisfaction, lower burnout, and lower intention to leave. Understanding that you are part of a team — and that others genuinely value your professional contribution — makes practice feel less lonely and less overwhelming. This matters particularly for GP trainees, who can sometimes feel isolated in a world of medicine-heavy hierarchies.

⚠️ Barriers to IPL — and How to Overcome Them

IPL is genuinely difficult to implement well. Understanding why it fails helps you advocate for it more effectively — and helps trainers design better sessions.

BarrierWhy It HappensHow to Address It
Scheduling & logisticsDifferent professions have different clinical commitments and timetablesProtected IPL time built into the practice timetable; virtual meetings can help
Professional hierarchiesUnconscious assumption that doctors lead and others followActively give different professions the facilitator role in meetings
StereotypingAssumptions about what other professions do or think — often wrongRole clarification exercises; shadow sessions; deliberately mixed teams
Different training culturesNursing, medicine, pharmacy, social work have very different educational traditionsName the differences openly — they are interesting, not problematic
Lack of institutional supportNo protected time, no facilitation, no evaluationMake the business case: IPL reduces duplication and error, both of which have financial costs
Assessment mismatchTrainees are individually assessed; collaboration is hard to measureUse reflective entries in 14Fish ePortfolio to capture IPL learning explicitly
Quick Summary

⚡ Quick Summary — If You Only Read One Section

What Is IPL?

Two or more professions learning with, from, and about each other to improve collaboration and patient care.

Why It Matters

Safer patients, fewer errors, less duplication, happier teams — and it is now a core expectation of modern UK primary care.

IPL ≠ MPL

Multi-professional learning = sitting in the same room. Inter-professional learning = actually learning from each other's perspectives.

RCGP Curriculum

IPL underpins the Professional Capabilities framework. The RCGP explicitly expects trainees to learn from the full primary care team.

GP's Role in IPL

You are the coordinator of care — the "helicopter view" holder. IPL helps you understand every profession's lens so that coordination actually works.

The PCN Revolution

Primary Care Networks have transformed UK general practice into genuinely multi-professional teams. IPL is no longer optional — it is survival.

Putting It Into Practice

🛠 How to Do IPL Well — A Step-by-Step Guide

IPL does not need to be complicated. In fact, some of the best IPL happens informally — if you approach it with the right mindset.

  • 1

    Identify the right people

    Choose professions whose roles meaningfully intersect with the topic at hand. A session on medication safety benefits from including the clinical pharmacist. A session on complex social cases needs the social prescriber and health visitor in the room.

  • 2

    Clarify your aim upfront

    Are you trying to understand roles (the "about" dimension)? Share expertise (the "from" dimension)? Solve a shared problem (the "with" dimension)? Being explicit about your aim makes the session much more focused and productive.

  • 3

    Use a real case or shared problem

    Abstract lectures rarely achieve genuine IPL. A real patient scenario — anonymised if needed — forces different professionals to bring their actual knowledge to the table. The disagreements and different perspectives are where the learning happens.

  • 4

    Ask — do not assume

    Ask other professions: "What would you do here? What does this look like from your perspective? What do you wish GPs understood about your role?" You will almost certainly be surprised by the answers.

  • 5

    Rotate the facilitator role

    If a GP always leads, the other professions remain in a passive role. A genuinely interprofessional group takes turns leading. This flattens hierarchy and draws out expertise that would otherwise stay quiet.

  • 6

    Reflect and record

    After each IPL activity, spend five minutes reflecting: What did you learn that you did not know before? How will this change your practice? Record this on your 14Fish ePortfolio — it contributes to Professional Capability evidence and is excellent ARCP material.

🗓 Practical IPL Activities — Ideas for Your Practice

In GP practice

  • Shadow sessions with pharmacist, nurse, or health visitor
  • Joint case reviews in safeguarding meetings
  • MDT meetings with structured role clarification
  • Shared significant event analysis
  • Joint tutorials with a practice nurse or pharmacist

At VTS / PCN level

  • Half-day release sessions with trainees from multiple professions
  • Simulation exercises with mixed professional groups
  • Cross-professional quality improvement projects
  • Co-facilitated teaching — GP and pharmacist together
  • Community placements with allied health professions
Trainer & Teaching Guidance

🎓 For Trainers — Teaching IPL

🟣

Common Trainee Blind Spots

  • Assuming "I already know what the pharmacist does" — they usually don't, not in any depth
  • Confusing MPL (being in the same meeting) with IPL (actually learning from each other)
  • Thinking IPL is something that happens at VTS study days, not in their own practice every week
  • Undervaluing the knowledge of non-medical team members, especially admin staff and health visitors
  • Failing to document IPL experiences on their 14Fish ePortfolio as formal learning

📚 Tutorial Ideas

Setup: Invite a practice pharmacist, practice nurse, or health visitor to join the tutorial (even virtually). Ask each person to spend five minutes explaining: (a) what they actually do on a typical day, (b) what they wish the GP knew about their role, and (c) when they most need GP input.

Debrief questions: What surprised you? How will this change your referral or delegation behaviour? What have you been doing that you could hand to someone better placed?

Setup: Choose a complex patient — ideally one with multiple professionals involved. Ask the trainee to present the case, then invite each professional present to add their perspective. What do they see? What do they prioritise? What do they wish they had known sooner?

Learning outcome: The trainee discovers that each profession holds a different piece of the patient's story. Good care means gathering all those pieces.

Task: Ask the trainee to identify three things they have learned from a non-medical member of the practice team in the past month. If they cannot name three things, discuss why — and plan how to make IPL happen more deliberately over the next month.

Portfolio link: This reflection can go straight onto the 14Fish ePortfolio as evidence of Professional Capability development.

💬 Reflective Questions for Tutorials

  • "What does the practice pharmacist do that overlaps with your role? Where does the boundary lie?"
  • "When did you last learn something clinically useful from a non-medical member of your team?"
  • "Have you ever disagreed with a nurse's or pharmacist's assessment? How did you handle it?"
  • "What would your patients lose if your practice ran with GPs only — no nurses, no pharmacist?"
  • "In what situations do you feel uncertain about who is best placed to manage a patient? How do you resolve that?"

🩺 For Trainees — Making the Most of IPL

✅ Do This

  • Book at least one shadow session with a clinical pharmacist, first-contact physio, or health visitor during your GP placement
  • Attend every MDT meeting you can — and actively contribute
  • After each meeting, write a brief reflection on your 14Fish ePortfolio about what you learned from another profession
  • Ask non-medical colleagues directly: "What do GPs get wrong about your role?"
  • Include your MSF reviewers from nursing, pharmacy, and admin teams — not just doctors

❌ Avoid This

  • Thinking "I know what a nurse does" without ever actually asking
  • Sitting in MDT meetings passively without engaging
  • Treating non-medical team members as support staff rather than colleagues
  • Forgetting to record IPL experiences — they disappear from memory fast
  • Assuming that IPL is something that happens elsewhere, not in your practice every day
🌟

Practical Pearl — The "What Do You Wish GPs Knew?" Question

This single question — asked respectfully to any colleague from another profession — will generate more IPL value than a year of passive MDT attendance. Try it with your practice pharmacist, your practice nurse, and your health visitor. The answers are always illuminating.

💡

Portfolio Tip — Making IPL Count on Your 14Fish ePortfolio

When writing an IPL reflection on your 14Fish ePortfolio, structure it around the three dimensions: what did you learn with this person (shared activity)? What did you learn from them (their expertise)? What did you learn about them (their role, perspective, priorities)? This structure demonstrates genuine IPL rather than just attendance at a meeting.

Insider Wisdom — Real-World Tips & Voices

💎 Insider Pearls — What Trainees Actually Say

💡

The Pharmacist Revelation

"I sat with our clinical pharmacist for a morning and realised she was managing most of my complex polypharmacy patients better than I was. I now refer to her before I deprescribe anything."

💡

The Admin Insight

"The receptionist told me which patients always cancelled their follow-ups and why. That changed how I safety-netted completely. They see things I never will from behind a consulting room door."

💡

The Health Visitor Eye-Opener

"The health visitor told me what a family home actually looked like during her visits — context that never comes through in a GP consultation. I now routinely ask for her input on any complex child health case."

💡

The Portfolio Gold Mine

"IPL entries on my ePortfolio were some of the richest reflections I wrote. They were concrete, specific, and covered multiple Professional Capabilities at once. My ES loved them."

⚠️

Common Mistake

"I thought attending MDT meetings was IPL. It is not, unless you are actually learning from the other professionals there. Attendance is MPL. Engagement is IPL."

🔥

What Gets You Good Feedback

"Being curious, asking good questions, and making non-medical team members feel valued. Non-GP staff notice when a doctor listens to them. It changes the whole dynamic of the practice."

Voices from the Trenches — Real-World Tips from UK GP Trainees

🗣 What UK Trainees Actually Say About IPL

The tips below come from real experiences shared by UK GP trainees and trainers — on training forums, in discussion groups, in teaching podcasts, and in NHS England's own MDT guidance. None of it contradicts official RCGP or NHS guidance. All of it is the kind of practical wisdom that you rarely find in a textbook.

These are patterns from real practice — not individual opinions. They have been checked against RCGP and NHS England guidance before inclusion.

🗺 How to Hit the Ground Running in a New GP Practice — A Week-One Guide

Most trainees arrive in a new practice, sit in their consulting room, and wait for patients. The trainees who thrive do something different in their first week. Here is what that looks like:

Day 1 — Meet the team before you meet any patients. Ask your practice manager for a five-minute introduction to every member of the team. Not just the clinical staff — the receptionists, the care coordinators, the admin team. Learn their names. These are the people who will make your working life easier or harder. It is entirely your choice which.
Day 2–3 — Book your shadow sessions. Ask now — do not leave it. Book at least a half-day each with: the clinical pharmacist, a practice nurse, and the health visitor or social prescriber. These sessions are available to you as a trainee. If nobody has told you this, now you know.
Ask one question of each colleague you meet: "What do you wish GPs understood about your role?" Then listen. Do not interrupt. You will learn something genuinely surprising every single time.
End of week 1 — Write one reflective entry on your 14Fish ePortfolio. Describe what you learned FROM a non-medical colleague, what you learned ABOUT their role, and what you will do differently as a result. That is a complete IPL entry, and it takes ten minutes.
Ongoing — Treat every MDT meeting as a learning opportunity, not an admin exercise. Come prepared with a question for at least one non-medical colleague. Leave having understood something new about how they see the patient in front of them.

📊 The Most Common IPL Mistakes Made by UK GP Trainees

Trainers across UK deaneries consistently see the same mistakes. Here is how often each one comes up — and what to do instead.

Attending MDT but not engaging
Very common
Not recording IPL on ePortfolio
Very common
Assuming they know what the pharmacist does
Common
Never booking a shadow session
Common
Treating admin staff as support only
Frequent
Forgetting to ask non-GP colleagues for MSF
Moderate
Waiting for IPL to be "organised" for them
Moderate

Relative frequency based on patterns reported by trainers across UK deaneries — not from a formal survey.

🎓 What Each Role Can Teach You That Your Medical Training Never Did

Each member of your primary care team holds expertise that doctors are simply not trained in. Here is a quick map of those hidden goldmines.

💊
Clinical Pharmacist
  • Polypharmacy and deprescribing
  • Drug interactions and monitoring
  • Inhaler technique and concordance
  • Medication review frameworks
  • What the BNF actually says vs what GPs think it says
🩺
Practice Nurse
  • Long-term condition monitoring in depth
  • Wound care and dressings
  • Immunisation schedules and hesitancy
  • How patients actually behave between appointments
  • What GPs miss in a 10-minute consultation
👶
Health Visitor
  • What a family home really looks like
  • Postnatal mental health — the real picture
  • Child development milestones in context
  • Safeguarding red flags that GPs never see
  • Community resources that make a real difference
🧠
Mental Health Practitioner
  • What IAPT/Talking Therapies can and cannot do
  • Crisis pathways — who to call and when
  • Trauma-informed consultations
  • The gap between what patients say and what they mean
  • Risk assessment beyond the PHQ-9
🏃
First-Contact Physiotherapist
  • MSK assessment — what a thorough one looks like
  • When NOT to refer to orthopaedics (and when to)
  • Exercise as medicine — actually prescribing it
  • Red flags in back pain you may have overlooked
  • How patients understand (and misunderstand) pain
🤝
Social Prescriber
  • What the voluntary sector in your area actually offers
  • Social determinants — housing, debt, isolation
  • When a medical appointment is not the right answer
  • How to refer without making it feel like a rejection
  • Community assets GPs have never heard of
🚑
Paramedic / ANP
  • Home visit findings — what GPs miss from an armchair
  • Acute presentations and triage decision-making
  • When 999 is right and when it is not
  • The frailty presentation that looks fine on paper
  • Realistic safety-netting for complex home situations
📋
Reception & Admin Team
  • Which patients never follow up and why
  • How patients really describe their symptoms on the phone
  • The social context behind a repeat prescription request
  • Which families are "known" to the practice and why
  • How the practice actually runs — the invisible machinery

💬 Straight from the Horse's Mouth — Tips from UK Trainees

These are the kinds of reflections that come up again and again among UK GP trainees. Presented here as they would be spoken — direct, warm, and occasionally a little blunt.

I kept booking MSF reviewers who were all doctors. My trainer pointed out I was missing the point. When I asked the pharmacist and the practice nurse, their feedback was the most useful thing I received in the whole of ST2. I honestly had no idea how I was coming across.
📋 Portfolio tip — ST2 trainee
Nobody told me that the social prescriber would become one of the most important people in my working week. I was referring patients to her from day three. But it took me three months to actually sit down and understand what she does. That was three months wasted.
🤝 MDT working — ST3 trainee
The first time I sat in with the health visitor, I genuinely felt ashamed about how little I knew about the families on my list. She had visited homes I had never seen. She knew things about those families that I could never find out in a consultation room. IPL changed how I saw safeguarding completely.
👶 Safeguarding — ST2 trainee
Our pharmacist runs the medication reviews for all the care home patients. I used to do these myself. She does them better. More systematically, more knowledgeably. I deprescribe more confidently now because she explains her reasoning and I've learned from it. That's genuine IPL — two professions, each better for the other.
💊 Prescribing — ST3 trainee
My trainer asked me in a tutorial: "What did you learn from a non-medical colleague this week?" I had nothing. I had seen the pharmacist, attended the MDT, spoken to the nurse — and I had nothing. That was the moment I understood I was doing MPL, not IPL. The difference is entirely in your attitude, not the activity.
⚠️ Common trap — ST1 trainee
The receptionist quietly told me that a patient I'd had three frustrating consultations with was struggling with debt and hadn't been eating properly. She knew because the patient had confided in her at the desk. That one piece of information made the entire clinical picture make sense. Receptionists know things doctors never will. Treat them as colleagues, not gatekeepers.
💡 Admin wisdom — ST2 trainee

📅 IPL Across Your Training Years — What to Focus On When

IPL does not look the same in ST1, ST2, and ST3. Your relationship with the team evolves. Here is a roadmap.

ST1
Hospital posts
  • Learn from ward nurses and allied health
  • Attend MDT cancer and palliative meetings
  • Shadow a specialist nurse or AHP
  • Notice how hospital teams work — compare to GP
  • Start logging IPL reflections now
ST2
First GP post
  • Book shadow sessions in week one
  • Understand the ARRS roles in your PCN
  • Ask colleagues the "What do you wish GPs knew?" question
  • Use IPL for MSF — include non-medical reviewers
  • Write one IPL ePortfolio entry per month
ST3
Final year
  • Lead an IPL session or MDT discussion
  • Supervise a trainee pharmacist or nursing student
  • Contribute to QI projects with the wider team
  • Demonstrate Leadership capability through IPL evidence
  • Reflect on how IPL shaped your whole training

🏥 The PCN Reality — What NHS England's Own GPs Say

NHS England published a detailed discussion with GP partners who have been building multi-professional PCN teams from scratch. Their insights are directly relevant to GP trainees who are learning to work within these teams.

🏥

"The Right Person for the Right Patient"

GP partners building PCN teams consistently say the same thing: the goal is not to get patients to see a GP — it is to get patients to see the right person. A clinical pharmacist, a first-contact physio, a mental health practitioner, or a social prescriber may be more helpful than a GP for many presentations. IPL teaches you to think this way naturally.

💡

"Senior Clinicians Make Better Triage Decisions"

NHS England's own MDT guidance notes that the most effective practices have experienced clinicians — including trainees as they develop — leading triage decisions. This only works if you understand what each role in your team can and cannot do. That understanding comes from IPL. It cannot come from a job description.

📋

"Socialising Builds the Team"

NHS England and CAIPE guidance both note something that sounds obvious but is often overlooked: effective interprofessional teams also socialise informally. A five-minute chat over coffee is sometimes worth more than a structured tutorial. Getting to know colleagues as people — not just as professional roles — is part of what makes IPL stick.

🌍 Specific Tips for International Medical Graduates (IMGs)

The UK primary care team looks very different from what most IMGs will have experienced in their home countries. These tips are for doctors who are new to the UK system.

🆕 Roles that are unique to UK primary care

  • Health Visitor — a community nurse who visits families with young children at home. There is no direct equivalent in many countries. They hold safeguarding knowledge that GPs depend on.
  • Social Prescriber / Link Worker — connects patients to non-medical community resources. This is a genuinely new role, even for UK-trained doctors.
  • Clinical Pharmacist in GP practice — this is different from a community pharmacist. They see patients, review medication, and increasingly prescribe independently. By 2026, all newly qualified UK pharmacists will be independent prescribers.
  • Care Coordinator — manages complex patients, coordinates their care plan, and often knows the patient better than anyone else on the team.

✅ What to do in your first GP placement

  • Ask your trainer to arrange an orientation session with each key team member — this is completely normal to request
  • Ask each person: "How does your role work in this practice?" — every practice is slightly different
  • Do not assume that professional titles mean the same thing as they do in your home country
  • The UK safeguarding system is complex — the health visitor and the practice safeguarding lead are your best guides
  • The RCGP curriculum explicitly says: "Short attachments to other primary healthcare team workers are helpful." Use this as permission to ask.

🔒 Psychological Safety — The Hidden Ingredient

Research from Google's Project Aristotle — widely applied in NHS teamwork guidance — found that the single biggest predictor of effective team performance is psychological safety: the belief that you can speak up, ask questions, and admit uncertainty without being judged.

As a trainee, you build psychological safety by:

  • Admitting when you do not know something — "I'm not sure, can you help me think through this?"
  • Thanking colleagues explicitly when they catch something you missed
  • Never dismissing a concern raised by a nurse, pharmacist, or admin staff
  • Asking questions rather than assuming — curiosity signals respect
  • Speaking positively about non-medical colleagues to other doctors

Signs that psychological safety is low in your team:

  • People go quiet when the senior GP enters the meeting
  • Concerns are raised after the meeting, not in it
  • Non-clinical staff feel they cannot question a clinical decision
  • Errors are hidden rather than shared in significant event analysis
  • New ARRS staff are not included in clinical discussions
🟣

A Note on the Prescribing Pharmacist — Something Most Trainees Don't Know

From 2026, all newly qualified UK pharmacists will be able to prescribe independently from their first day of registration. This is a major shift. In your ST3 year, you will likely be supervising or working alongside a trainee pharmacist who is learning to prescribe — often under your supervision as a GP trainee. The IPL opportunity here is significant, and it goes both ways: you will learn from them, and they will learn from you.

⚡ Quick Wins — Small Things That Make a Big Difference

Not all IPL requires a scheduled session or a formal meeting. These small, easy habits create genuine learning and goodwill — and cost almost nothing.

The Coffee Rule

Spend two minutes of your lunch break talking to a non-medical colleague about their morning. Not a clinical debrief — actual conversation. You will learn something about how the practice works that no tutorial can teach you.

📞

The Phone-First Habit

When you are unsure about a complex patient, call the practice pharmacist before you Google the answer. You will get a better answer faster — and the pharmacist will appreciate being asked. That relationship builds over time.

📬

The Feedback Loop

When a colleague from another profession gives you useful information about a patient, tell them what happened as a result of their input. Close the loop. It takes thirty seconds and it makes people feel their contribution mattered — because it did.

🗣

The Tuesday Afternoon Question

Once a week, ask one colleague from another profession: "Is there anything you've noticed about a patient that you've been meaning to mention to me?" You will be surprised how often the answer is yes — and how long they have been waiting to be asked.

📝

The Three-Line ePortfolio Entry

You do not need a 500-word essay for every IPL episode. A clear three-line entry — what happened, what you learned from the other profession, and what you will do differently — is perfectly good evidence. Do it while it is fresh.

🙏

Say Thank You — Out Loud

When a colleague from another profession helps you — the receptionist who flagged something, the nurse who caught an abnormal result, the pharmacist who spotted an interaction — say thank you explicitly. Not as a platitude. As an acknowledgement that their expertise mattered to a patient's care.

Memory Aids & Frameworks

🧠 Memory Aid — The WITH FROM ABOUT Framework

Remember: W · F · A

W
WITH
Shared activity — doing things together
F
FROM
Receiving each other's expertise
A
ABOUT
Understanding roles, perspectives, priorities

If your IPL activity only ticks one of these three boxes, think about how to build in the other two.

🎯 The TEAM Mnemonic — For Effective IPL Sessions

T
Target — Be clear about what you are trying to learn from this IPL activity
E
Engage — Actively participate; ask questions; do not just observe passively
A
Apply — Think about how this learning changes what you will do tomorrow in clinic
M
Make it visible — Record it on your 14Fish ePortfolio; give it the professional attention it deserves
Video Resources

▶ Curated Video Collection

A selection of high-quality videos on interprofessional practice and education. Worth 15 minutes of your time.

🎬
Interprofessional Practice & Education
An accessible overview of IPE principles and why they matter in modern healthcare
🎬
Interprofessional Practice Framework
How to structure interprofessional collaboration — a practical framework for clinical teams
🎬
Why Interprofessional Education Matters
The evidence base for IPE — why training together leads to better patient outcomes
🎬
When IPL Goes Wrong
Real-world case examples showing how poor interprofessional collaboration contributed to patient harm — and what could have been done differently
🎬
Key Principles of Interprofessional Collaborative Practice
A full course on IPCP — the "what" and "how" of working collaboratively across professions

Search these titles on YouTube to find the corresponding videos. The full IPCP course is available as a playlist.

Frequently Asked Questions

❓ FAQ

Is attending an MDT meeting enough to count as IPL?
Attending a meeting counts as multi-professional learning — you are in the same room as other professions. To count as genuine IPL, you need to actively learn from their perspectives: ask questions, have your thinking challenged, and understand something new about their role or their way of seeing the patient. The "from" and "about" dimensions are what make it truly interprofessional.
How do I record IPL on my 14Fish ePortfolio?
Use a reflective log entry and structure it around the WITH/FROM/ABOUT framework. Describe the activity, who was involved, what you learned from their professional perspective, and how it will change your practice. Link it to relevant Professional Capabilities — Leadership and Management, and Professionalism are the most obvious ones, but depending on the clinical topic, others will apply too.
What if my practice does not do structured IPL?
You do not need a formal programme. A single shadow session, a conversation during coffee, or a five-minute debrief after a joint visit can all generate genuine IPL. The structure comes from your approach — asking the right questions, being curious, and then reflecting on what you learned. If your practice has no structured IPL, you can discuss this with your trainer as a development opportunity for the whole practice.
Do IMGs face any specific challenges with IPL in the UK?
Yes — the UK primary care team structure (health visitors, PCN roles, social prescribers, clinical pharmacists working in practices) is quite different from many other countries. It is worth making an explicit effort early in your placement to understand who does what in your specific practice. The safeguarding structure in particular can be unfamiliar. Your trainer should be able to arrange shadowing or introductory meetings with other team members.
Is IPL relevant to my ARCP?
Yes. Evidence of IPL on your 14Fish ePortfolio supports several Professional Capabilities, particularly in the Leadership and Management, and Working with Colleagues domains. ARCPs assess whether you are developing as a rounded doctor who can function in a team — not just someone who can manage individual patients. Good IPL entries demonstrate that breadth convincingly.
Final Summary

📌 Final Take-Home Points

  1. IPL means learning with, from, and about other professions — not just sitting in the same room as them. The distinction matters enormously.
  2. Modern UK general practice is built around multi-professional PCN teams. IPL is no longer a nice extra — it is how safe, effective primary care works.
  3. CAIPE and the WHO define IPL clearly. The three-word formula — with, from, about — is your quality check for every IPL activity.
  4. The four core competencies of IPL are: values & ethics, roles & responsibilities, interprofessional communication, and teams & teamwork. These map closely onto the RCGP Professional Capabilities framework.
  5. The biggest IPL insight is almost always available by asking: "What do you wish GPs knew about your role?" Ask it. Listen carefully.
  6. Record IPL on your 14Fish ePortfolio using the WITH/FROM/ABOUT structure. It generates rich, multi-capability evidence that your educational supervisor will value.
  7. Barriers to IPL are real — scheduling, hierarchy, stereotyping — but nearly all of them can be overcome with intentional effort and a genuinely curious attitude.
  8. The best GP trainees are those who are comfortable being the least-informed person in a multi-professional conversation. That humility is a clinical strength, not a weakness.

Videos

Interprofessional Practice & Education

Interprofessional Practice Framework

Why Interprofessional Education Matters

Negative Experiences that could have been improved with Interprofessional Collaborative Practice

Key Principles of InterProfessional Collaborative Practice.  Full course available here.

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Bradford VTS was created by Dr. Ramesh Mehay, a Programme Director for Bradford GP Training Scheme back in 2001. Over the years, it has seen many permutations.  At the time, there were very few resources for GP trainees and their trainers so Bradford decided to create one FOR EVERYONE. 

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