Implications are still resonating from high profile inquiries into abuse and neglect at the Mid Staffordshire (Francis Report, 2010) and Winterbourne View Hospitals, driving home the need throughout the United Kingdom to improve collaborative practice and, to that end, interprofessional education (IPE) without which widespread shortcomings in patient care and safety will not be remedied. These challenges coincide with radical reforms led by government regarding the integration of health and social care, the realignment of the workforce to respond more flexibly to the individual, family and community needs, and the commissioning of education and services. Yet local and national co-ordination between the many organisations with the responsibility for interprofessional implementation that are caught up in this maelstrom of change remains ineffective. The Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education (CAIPE) is responding at two levels. First, by supporting its members in universities and practice as they revise curricula for the next generation across the professions and by strengthening work-based interprofessional learning for those already in practice. Second, by working with the commissioning, educational, professional and regulatory bodies to coordinate policies, priorities, strategies and requirements for the interprofessional education occuring within professional education.
