Promoting Interprofessional Education (IPE) with PBL through the Biennial Asia-Pacifi c Joint Conference on PBL (APJC-PBL)

Interprofessional collaborative patient-centered care (IPCPC) is intuitively essential for optimal healthcare outcomes and thus the global push by various health professional bodies for the interprofessional education (IPE) necessary for IPCPC. The Asia-Pacifi c Joint Conference for PBL (APJC-PBL) therefore adopted a policy of promoting PBL in IPE in its biennial conference. We report on the success of that endeavor focusing on the inaugural (2010) IPE workshop which introduced IPE and the role of PBL in its delivery and triggering an emerging interest in succeeding conferences. The workshop small group activity (SGA) on developing PBL triggers for IPE is reported. Of the 56 participants 49 (88%) completed the post-workshop Likert-scale questionnaire with positive ratings for the Activity Delivery (AD = 0.93) and Activity Outcome (AO = 0.95) parameters. The SGA was the aspect of the workshop most liked, and more time for SGA the aspect needing improvement. This workshop revealed a strong interest in the use of PBL for IPE, perhaps due to their pedagogic similarities. This study demonstrated the effective use of PBL triggers for IPE and has provided preliminary evidence that PBL as a reliable delivery modality for IPE is gaining popularity in the Asia- Pacifi c region.