At Northumbria University’s recent ‘Working Well in Healthcare’ event – designed to bring together stakeholders from across the health and social care sector to discuss the most pressing challenges and innovations across the industry – three speakers came together to talk delegates through the collaborative work taking place around interprofessional learning in health and social care education.
Claire Leader, Assistant Professor and Director of Interprofessional Education at Northumbria University, Dr Rebecca Hancock, Director of Interprofessional Education at the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Newcastle University and Stevie Smith, Programme Lead for the Collaborative Newcastle Universities Agreement took attendees through a presentation that outlined some of the interprofessional opportunities they’ve delivered for students and learners by adopting a connected, collaborative approach across institutions.
Redefining Health Education Through Collaboration
Effective health and social care demands seamless collaboration between disciplines, meaning that learning to work together with people outside a student’s immediate profession is essential to producing a prepared workforce. Interprofessional education is reshaping how students are taught across the UK. Northumbria University, in partnership with Newcastle University, is at the forefront of this movement leveraging experiential learning, cross-institutional collaboration, and innovative simulation to prepare students for the complexities of modern health and social care.
Interprofessional education brings together students from different professional backgrounds including medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, pharmacy, business, and more, to learn with, from, and about each other. This approach not only builds communication and teamwork skills but also promotes empathy, systems thinking, and patient-centred care. For Northumbria, interprofessional learning is more than a curriculum feature; it's a strategic, civic commitment to producing competent, collaborative health and social care professionals equipped to serve communities across the North East and beyond.
What is Interprofessional Education?
Interprofessional education typically includes simulation-based education, shared clinical placements, problem-based learning, and even gamified scenarios that reflect real-world practice. Its impact extends beyond the classroom, developing "soft" but essential skills like ethical decision-making, role clarity and collaboration, and adaptability in complex care environments.
A Collaborative Framework
Northumbria University’s leadership in interprofessional learning is closely tied to its partnership with Newcastle University under the Collaborative Newcastle Universities Agreement (CNUA). Established in 2021, this civic university agreement encourages joint initiatives that benefit both the city and its citizens.
One of CNUA’s key focus areas is health. Through this partnership, the universities have aligned their teaching resources, shared faculty roles, and designed common learning experiences, enabling students from different institutions and programmes to interact in meaningful, professionally relevant, ways.
These collaborations aren’t theoretical. They include co-developing simulation scenarios, region-wide interprofessional learning strategies with neighbouring universities, and shared use of cutting-edge technologies like virtual reality. Together, these efforts position Newcastle as a hub for health innovation and interprofessional education.
The Value of Realism: Embedding Clinical Authenticity into Interprofessional Education
For interprofessional learning to be effective, it must be authentic. Students are quick to detect when learning feels artificial or disjointed from real-life practice.
One standout example from Northumbria and Newcastle Universities is the acute simulation programme involving third-year nursing and fourth-year medical students. These sessions are co-designed by faculty representatives from both universities and NHS partners, reflecting real clinical roles and workflows. Students are challenged to manage deteriorating patients under pressure, mirroring real hospital dynamics with various groups of medical professionals having to work together for the best outcome.
Crucially, the learning doesn’t stop at the simulation. Students undergo structured debriefs where they reflect on their performance, decision-making, and teamwork, applying what they've learned to future scenarios. Evaluations consistently highlight students’ appreciation for the realism, practical skill development, and opportunity to collaborate with peers from other disciplines, and indeed other institutions.
Innovating Learning: Experiential Approaches at Northumbria Universities
Northumbria’s interprofessional learning programme includes a broad array of experiential learning activities that expose students to diverse health and social care situations and team-based challenges. These include:
360° Immersive Video Learning
Before entering the simulation suite, students can explore acute scenarios through virtual reality (VR) or screen-based 360° video. They observe entire scenarios from multiple perspectives, review best-practice interventions, and deepen their understanding of clinical reasoning and communication in high-stakes situations.
Ward-Based Incivility Education
Students engage in simulated ward environments where they must respond to incivility from staff helping them build confidence and strategies for managing unprofessional behaviour and also giving them a deeper appreciation for the skillsets of other disciplines. Preliminary research across 300 students shows significant improvements in self-efficacy and readiness to handle such challenges in clinical practice following this type of education.
Escape Rooms and Tabletop Exercises
Interactive escape room scenarios are also used to engage students in learning in a creative way. Through these structured sessions students can explore for example, how different professions interpret acronyms and medical terminology, highlighting the risk of miscommunication. Tabletop exercises are also utilised to help develop skills required outside of clinical duties, for example managing a hospital fire. Through these sessions students can develop skills such as leadership, resource management, and rapid team decision-making.
Simulated Consultations in Mental Health and Primary Care
Students practise motivational interviewing and suicide risk assessment in primary care scenarios. These emotionally and ethically complex situations help future professionals refine their communication and empathy skills in a supportive environment.
Partnering Beyond Borders: Regional and National Collaboration
Northumbria doesn’t work in isolation. Its interprofessional learning initiatives stretch across the region, engaging peers at Teesside, Sunderland, and York universities, as well as Newcastle. Faculty leaders at Northumbria and Newcastle hold reciprocal appointments, allowing for shared planning and consistency across programmes.
Beyond academic institutions, Northumbria works closely with Integrated Care Boards, NHS Trusts, and health and social care providers. This ensures students' experiences reflect actual care settings and system-wide priorities like health equity, workforce development, and digital transformation.
An example of this collaboration from Newcastle University includes co-designed sessions using Patients Know Best, a real-world patient record platform. Medical and dietetic students analyse cases, assess cardiovascular risk, and learn from each other's clinical perspectives preparing them for integrated team-based care.
Gamification: A Novel Frontier in Interprofessional Learning
To reach students in new ways, Newcastle University is also exploring gamified approaches to interprofessional learning. One standout innovation is Scrubs and Suits, a board game where medical and business students simulate hospital decision-making under constraints.
Participants must balance clinical priorities, ethical dilemmas, and resource management just like real health and social care leaders. The game introduces business students to the human side of health and social care, while clinical students grapple with system-level decisions typically handled by management. This cross-pollination of perspectives is exactly what interprofessional learning seeks to cultivate – an understanding of how all roles contribute to patient outcomes.
Amplifying the Patient Voice and Learning from Experience
A core strength of Northumbria’s interprofessional learning approach is its emphasis on experts by experience, individuals with lived experience of health and social care. These voices are integrated into interprofessional learning sessions from Year 1, ensuring students grasp the impact of team-based care from the patient's perspective.
Delivered via platforms like Microsoft Teams, these sessions enable large-scale participation and have received consistently positive feedback. Hearing directly from service users’ challenges students to consider empathy, equity, and communication in ways textbooks cannot replicate.
Impact and Feedback
Student feedback across Northumbria’s interprofessional learning offering is overwhelmingly positive. Common themes include:
Importantly, these skills translate into better preparedness for practice. Graduates leave university with a clearer sense of their role within the health and social care system and how to contribute to cohesive, patient-centred care.
A Blueprint for Transformative Health and Social Care Education
Interprofessional learning is no longer an optional enhancement, it’s a fundamental pillar of quality health and social care education. Northumbria University’s bold, integrated approach is demonstrating how interprofessional learning can be embedded at scale, across disciplines, and in partnership with the wider health system. Equally, its work with Newcastle University through the Collaborative Universities Newcastle Agreement is shining a light on how higher education institutions can come together to provide more learning opportunities of this type together.
By preparing students to work effectively in diverse, multidisciplinary teams, Northumbria is equipping the next generation of health and social care professionals to meet the demands of modern care and lead transformative change across the sector.
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