As an advocate of IPE here at Lincoln, we have several specific aims designed to bring us closer to reaching our mission – to foster high standard of care through collaborative working in clinical and social care practice.

Our aims and objectives are to:

• Enable students to have regular, meaningful interaction with a range of other disciplines
• Foster interdisciplinary research in IPE
• Support the University of Lincoln "student as producer" activities in the development of IPE
• Involve service users in the development and implementation of IPE activities.

Currently, the IPE movement at the University of Lincoln directly relates to the School of Health and Social Care, including the following courses:

• BSc Health and Social Care
• BSc Nursing (Adult)
• BSc Nursing (Mental Health)
• BSc Social Work
• MSc Social Work
• Practice Cert in Non-Medical Prescribing
• DClinPsy Psychology

However, as the group gains momentum, we anticipate the arms of IPE will reach far beyond the realms of Health and Social care, right into the other fantastic programmes on offer here at Lincoln.

In order to fulfil our objectives, the University looks to harness four domains of activity within IPE:

Placement - by sending student out into "real life" scenarios within the workplace, IPE becomes contextualised and the importance of its incorporation into all aspects of working life becomes evident. Here at the University, the students carry out X amount of work placements for varying lengths of time. Time in areas of differing professions? *More info re: what happens during placement?

Campus - Embedding IPE throughout student life on campus is vital in order to appropriately shape the future of the Health and Social Care profession. Whilst on campus, we hold regular sessions in which students from differing professions can collaborate on different projects including real life role play sessions. Here students will be faced with a mission in which only a collective team effort will form a resolution. These tasks are designed to be as realistic as possible in order to really emphasise the importance and effectiveness of a multi-disciplinary team.

Online - Lincoln Values Exchange, Action Learning sets... asynchronous discussions between students of differing disciplines. Lincoln Values Exchange is a new communication tool that we have introduced in order to allow groups of students from differing professions to think through and discuss any health and social care issue in depth through and online medium. Through this means of communications, each profession can understand one another more effectively and current issues can be discussed extensively. Here at Lincoln, we encourage hand on experience wherever possible - from work placements to role play, we have an active network of associates that allow us to facilitate these activities. However we do also acknowledge that sometimes gathering learners for these set meetings and activities just isn't feasible and therefore, alongside the Lincoln Values Exchange, we have begun to develop another communication tool - online action learning.

Research and Evaluation - Research projects, synoptic evaluation - making links between two areas of study

Support for Staff and Students - Here at Lincoln, we are proud of the substantial core of staff we have who have experience of the facilitation of IPE. We do also acknowledge that as a wider programme of activities is rolled out, it will be important to develop induction and on going training/support activities for staff. This will take an interdepartmental form and will therefore take the idea of Interprofessional education and embed it into other diverse aspects of University life.

Identification of Common/Core Competencies - In order to deliver effective IPE experiences, it will be necessary to identify core/overlapping competencies within the participating disciplines. These may be core to all disciplines (e.g. relating to duty of care) or may relate to specific areas of care that are shared by two or more disciplines (e.g. specific clinical topics or the sharing of car4e between health and social agencies).

Identification of National and International Partners - Some professional groups (e.g. medicine) are not represented in the current University of Lincoln community. Therefore, by enabling interactions with a wide range of health and social care practitioners (both nationally and internationally), we can enhance the depth of experience for students. To this end, links with other HE providers are currently being developed.

Involvement of Service Users and Carers - Evaluation of the impact of IPE on care is known to be challenging owing to the significant lag time between the educational experience and post-registration opportunities to collaborate in care. For this reason, active involvement of service users and students in the planning of IPE activities is essential to maximise the chance of making a positive impact on care in the future.

Development of IPE Journal - In order for students to capture and reflect upon their IPE activities throughout their educational journey, we are currently developing a self-directed, online system in which students can input the Interprofessional activities that they have experienced and then reflect upon them.

*Examples, photos, feedback headlines