From global to local: How we’re preparing students to collaborate in the health workforce at Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery

It’s 4.00pm in Melbourne and I’m on a Zoom call with Professor Tina Brock. She’s adjusting to the time zone in Copenhagen, Denmark where she is attending FIP2025 – the International Pharmacy Federation conference. She apologises for her croaky ‘conference voice’, from intense networking conversations.

“The day I got here was a Sunday, so I just took a big walking tour to keep myself going,” Professor Brock says. “And they had converted and connected these two former cement silos – they’re like, ‘okay, we can tear them down, but why don't we, you know, connect them? And use that connection as the feature?’”

The eloquent symbol made Professor Brock, Director of the Collaborative Practice Centre at the University of Melbourne, pause.

I often talk about ‘tearing down’ or ‘burning down’ the silos. The problem with that is, it scares people into thinking they're losing something: ‘I'm losing my silo’, you know? Maybe the way the Danes have done this is actually a better way of bringing people into that journey [by] saying, ‘let's connect our silos’. Professor Tina Brock

Collaboration a strong theme in health education globally

Before Copenhagen, Professor Brock was in Barcelona for the International Association for Health Professions Education (AMEE) conference. “That was the first meeting where I had heard the word ‘interprofessional’ used as a noun,” reflects Professor Brock.

“Yeah, I'm a professional. But I am also an interprofessional. I'm not just the best doctor; I'm not just the best dentist. My contributions are complementary to others and that collective is ‘an interprofessional’. I thought that was cool,” says Professor Brock.

Having recently attended several global health education sector conferences, Professor Brock says she has repeatedly encountered the theme of collaboration.

“If I had to draw a bubble diagram, it would be a giant ‘word cloud’ with ‘collaboration, partnership, teamwork’ coming out strong, which tells me we're going in the right direction,” she says.

Yeah, I'm a professional. But I am also an interprofessional. I'm not just the best doctor; I'm not just the best dentist. My contributions are complementary to others and that collective is ‘an interprofessional’. I thought that was cool. Professor Tina Brock

“What has been challenging, I think, is while that's pretty compelling evidence, that that is what we need to do, there is little detail about how to do it because it requires cultural change.”

Professor Brock was excited that people are interested in the work that the Collaborative Practice Centre at the University of Melbourne is doing.

She’s on a quest to teach medicine, dentistry and health sciences students across the faculty the skills to effectively work together in teams.

Her diverse team at the Collaborative Practice Centre has developed the ‘Ways’ curriculum to do just that and they are embedding and integrating it into all the school programs across the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences.

“What many programs worldwide do is carve out the interprofessional as a separate subject. Whereas what we're trying to do is to integrate interprofessional education into the courses themselves. The route that we have chosen is the harder, but potentially, better one. Because if you integrate the courses, then that is best practice.”