Affiliations: University of New England, Portland, ME, USA | Children's Hospital Boston, MA, USA | Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Shelley Cohen Konrad, University of
New England, School of Social Work, 716 Stevens Avenue, Portland, ME 04103,
USA. Tel.: +1 207 221 4501; Fax: +1 207 221 4719; E-mail:
scohenkonrad@une.edu
Abstract: Theories and traditions emphasizing the centrality of caring have
guided the evolution of the healthcare professions. In contemporary practice,
creating a therapeutic context in which healing can occur relies not just on
the caring dispositions of individual clinicians, but also on the collective
relational capacities of interprofessional healthcare teams. This article
describes the intersection and complementarity of relational and
interprofessional learning approaches to health education, provides exemplars
of shared learning models and discusses the benefits and obstacles to
integrating relational and interprofessional philosophies into real world
practice.
