Using the Patchwork Text as a vehicle for promoting interprofessional health and social care collaboration in Higher Education

The promotion of effective interprofessional collaboration is very high on the UK government's agenda for reform and modernization of the Health and Social Care Services. As lecturers in Higher Education we are concerned with developing meaningful learning experiences that facilitate this collaboration in practice. To this end we introduced the Patchwork Text as an innovative form of teaching, learning and assessment and, in this article, we report the findings of our small exploratory study examining the student experience of the process and the potential of the Patchwork Text to facilitate interprofessional collaboration. We collected data from students via open-ended questionnaires and a focus group discussion. The findings that emanated from the data showed that the iterative process of the Patchwork Text enabled students to develop and express the characteristics that are essential for collaborative working. It thus acted as a powerful vehicle for the learning and practice of collaboration in the classroom.